Quantities and the minimum

Home textile minimums surprise almost everyone arriving from garments, and the reason is mechanical rather than commercial. In a garment factory the constraint is a sewing line, which can be changed over in a day. In a mill the constraints are the loom and the dye vessel. A loom is set up for a construction and a width and it is not worth stopping for a short run. A dye lot is a fixed batch, everything in it matches, and two lots never match exactly. So the minimum is per colour and per construction, and it is high.

What that means when you plan an order: four colours is four minimums, not one. Two constructions in one colour is two minimums. A print with three colourways is three strike offs and three lots. The cheapest first order in home textiles is almost always fewer colours in more depth, and buyers who cannot accept that usually end up paying a surcharge that costs more than the colours were worth.

Build your quantity as a table before you ask anybody: piece by size by colour, with a total per colour at the bottom. That table is what a mill actually quotes against, and it is the single most useful thing you can attach to a first enquiry.

The minimum itself belongs to the mill. It moves with the construction, the colour, the season and how busy the mill is, so any average we published would be wrong for your order in a way you could not detect. We do not publish one. What we do instead: every quote you receive through the desk carries that mill's own minimum, lead time, sample charge and payment schedule written into it. Send your size and colour table on the enquiry form and the first reply tells you whether it clears a dye lot, free.