Earlier this year a guy reached out wanting just 300 sets to test in a couple of beach shops. He was honest, said most factories told him the minimum was 1,000 or 2,000 and he couldn't risk that much on his first try.
I get it, because we were the small one once too. When we started in 2016 nobody wanted to take our little orders either. So I don't love being the factory that slams the door on a 300-piece guy.
The honest math is that small runs cost us more per set. The printing setup is the same whether you do 300 or 3,000, so on 300 that setup gets spread over way fewer pieces. The handle color changeover, same thing. So a small order is never going to be your best price and I just tell people that straight.
What we did with him was meet in the middle. He took our stock handle color instead of a custom one, which skipped a changeover. We used an existing sleeve size so no new die. And he was okay with a slightly longer lead time so we slotted his run in next to a bigger order using the same setup.
That got the 300 done at a price that worked for him without us losing our shirt. He's since come back for 800, and I'd bet next year it's more.
I think being a small factory is actually our thing here. The big ones won't bother with a 300-piece order, or they'll quote it so high you walk away. We'll talk about it. Sometimes the answer is still no, if the artwork is too custom for that quantity, but we'll at least explain why.
Eva runs most of these conversations and she's gotten good at finding the one or two things a buyer can flex on so the small order still makes sense. Usually it's color or timing.
