Your minimum order quantity is the smallest wholesale order you will accept, and it exists because the work of an order barely changes with its size. Picking, packing, invoicing, booking a collection and answering two emails costs the same whether the invoice is sixty dollars or six hundred.
For a small brand selling into independent shops, a stated minimum of one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars at wholesale is normal, and stating it clearly does more for you than the number itself. Buyers plan around a known floor; they get annoyed by one they discover at checkout.
What a minimum is actually protecting
Not greed, and not exclusivity. Time.
Take a lip balm: three dollars retail, one fifty wholesale, cases of twenty-four. A shop asks for one case. That is thirty-six dollars. You pick it, box it, print a label, pay six dollars of postage, raise an invoice, chase it when it is not paid, and answer a question about ingredients. You have spent the better part of half an hour and a postage label to make a handful of dollars.
Now the same shop orders six cases: two hundred and sixteen dollars, one box, one label, one invoice, the same half hour. The difference between those two orders is the entire argument for a floor.
The second thing it protects is the shelf. A shop that buys one case of one item puts four balms in a basket by the till and never reorders, because four balms do not look like a brand. Minimums push orders to a size where the product has a chance to sell.
You need two minimums, not one
This is the part brands get backwards.
The opening minimum applies to a new account's first order. Set it higher, because the first order has to be big enough to make a display and to be worth the setup work of onboarding an account.
The reorder minimum applies afterwards, and should be lower. The account is proven, the admin is lighter, and you want reordering to be frictionless. A shop that has to wait until it can justify a three-hundred-dollar order will simply order less often, and gaps on a shelf are how a brand falls out of a shop.
One hundred and fifty for reorders against two hundred and fifty to open is a shape that works for a lot of small brands. What the first order should contain, beyond the number, is in opening order.
A third floor sometimes appears for distributors and chains, expressed in cases or pallets rather than dollars, and it is a different conversation entirely.
How to work out your own number
Three inputs, ten minutes.
What does an order cost you to fulfil? Add the packing time at a real hourly rate, the carton and filler, the label, the payment fee, and the administrative minutes. For most small brands this lands somewhere between twelve and twenty-five dollars per order regardless of size.
What margin does an order leave? If your wholesale margin is about half the wholesale price, then an order has to be at least four to six times your fulfilment cost before it is clearly worth doing. Twenty dollars of cost against an order leaving half its value as margin means a hundred and fifty dollars is roughly the floor where the order stops being charity.
What does a sellable display cost? Look at what a shop needs on a shelf for the product to work: usually three or four items in full cases. Price that up. If it comes to two hundred and ten dollars, your opening minimum is around two hundred, not fifty.
Take the higher of the last two numbers and round it to something clean. Odd minimums look calculated in a bad way.
If you want that arithmetic laid out per item rather than per order, the sheet in wholesale price calculator shows which products drag an order below the floor.
Dollars, units or cases?
State the minimum in dollars for the whole order, and enforce case packs per item.
Dollars work because a buyer thinks in what they are spending and can mix items to reach the number. A unit minimum across a range forces awkward arithmetic and pushes buyers toward your cheapest item, which is the opposite of what you want.
Units work when you sell essentially one product in one size, where a dollar minimum is just a unit minimum wearing a disguise.
Cases work for distributors and for anyone shipping on pallets, because that is the unit they think in.
Whatever you choose, the per-item side of it is the case pack, which is the number that stops someone ordering three balms. The two decisions are made together, and the case side is in case pack.
Where to state it
In four places, in the same words: the top of the line sheet, the wholesale page of your website, the account sign-up form, and the first line of any email where you send prices.
Write it as a sentence a buyer can act on. "Opening order 250 dollars, reorders 150 dollars, full cases per item" is complete. "Minimums apply" is not, and it produces an email you have to answer.
Say it early rather than late. A buyer who builds an order and then discovers a floor feels tricked; a buyer who knows the floor builds an order that clears it.
When to bend it
Rarely, and never quietly.
Bend it for a genuinely strategic account: the shop whose name gives you credibility with the next twenty, or a chain running a trial in three stores. Say plainly that it is an exception and why, so it does not become your new floor.
Bend it for a sample order at retail price, which is not a wholesale order at all and should be priced like the retail sale it is.
Bend it at a trade show if you are already there and the marginal cost of an extra order is low, and put an end date on the concession.
Do not bend it because a shop asked nicely. Buyers talk to each other, and a minimum that moves under pressure stops being a minimum within a season. If you want to give something away to win an account, give freight or a one-time incentive instead, which is the reasoning in wholesale discount.
Your supplier has minimums too
The word appears on both sides of your business, and the two interact.
Your own manufacturer, printer or packaging supplier will have a minimum run, and it is usually much larger than your wholesale minimum. A tube supplier that will not run fewer than five thousand caps sets the pace of your whole cash cycle.
That matters for wholesale because it decides what you can promise. Lead times on a line sheet have to be honest about the production run behind them, and telling a buyer two weeks when the component lead time is six is how an account ends before it starts.
It also shapes the range. A brand whose supplier minimums are high should sell fewer variants deeper, because every extra variant is another five thousand of something sitting in a garage.
Enforcing it without having the conversation
The best minimum is one nobody has to discuss, which means enforcing it in the ordering path rather than in your inbox.
If wholesale orders come through your own storefront, set the minimum as a hard rule at checkout and make quantities step in case multiples rather than ones. Both are standard B2B controls now, and how to set them is in Shopify quantity rules.
If orders arrive by email on a form, put the minimum at the top of the form and total the order automatically, so a buyer sees the shortfall while they are still filling it in.
And when an order does come in under the floor, the reply that works is short and gives them a route: the minimum is a hundred and fifty, they are at ninety, and here are two items that would sit well next to what they picked. Most buyers top up. The ones who do not were never going to be an account worth having.
Questions brands ask about minimum order quantity
Is a minimum going to scare off small shops? The shops worth having expect one. A floor stated clearly reads as a brand that has done this before.
Should the minimum be lower on a marketplace? Usually yes, because platforms set their own floors and strangers buy small. Keep your direct minimum where it needs to be.
Can different product lines have different minimums? Keep one order-level floor and vary the case packs instead. Multiple minimums make a line sheet unreadable.
How do I find shops big enough to clear my minimum? Look at who already stocks comparable products. Pasting a product link into WholesalePilot previews the retailers and distributors carrying items like yours, which is a better use of an afternoon than emailing every shop in a city.