Start Small: Why Our MOQ Is 200 Pieces and Not 20,000

Our minimum order quantity is 200 pieces per item. We state it early in almost every conversation, and buyers regularly ask us to confirm it, as though it must be a mistake.

It is not a mistake, and the reasoning behind it says more about how we work than any company profile would.

The enquiries we never receive

Somewhere right now there is someone building a new home-goods brand who would be an excellent long-term customer. They have looked at Korean manufacturing, assumed the minimum order will be tens of thousands of units, concluded they are not ready, and closed the tab.

We will never know they existed. There is no analytics dashboard for the email that was not sent.

Publishing a low minimum is the only way we know to stop losing those people. It costs us nothing to say, and it converts an assumption into a conversation.

A first order is a test, not a sale

This is the part that is genuinely in our own interest.

You know your market better than we do. We know what our lines can produce. Neither of us knows with certainty which colour, size or pack format will actually move on your shelves until it does.

If we push a new partner into a large first order and the specification turns out to be slightly wrong for the market, the outcome is bad for everyone. The buyer sits on inventory for eighteen months, blames the product, and never orders again. We record one sale and lose a relationship.

A 200-piece trial gives us both real information. We adjust the specification, and the second order is built on evidence instead of optimism.

What we have learned from trials

Some examples of things that only became clear after a market test:

• White accounts for over 60% of our wallpaper sales, far more than any assortment plan would predict, which means the colour range matters less than the white stock depth.
• Physical retail stores prefer 2.5 metre rolls, while home-shopping and online customers buy 10 metre rolls. The channel decides the size more than the country does.
• Buyers who add a non-adhesive version for professional installers often find it opens an entirely separate customer segment they had not planned for.

None of that was in anyone's original specification. All of it came from starting small and paying attention.

What a trial order looks like with us

1. You tell us your market, rough sizes and rough quantity. Four sentences is enough.
2. We recommend a specification and send samples, free of charge for qualified importers, by courier with tracking.
3. You confirm or adjust after handling them.
4. We issue a proforma invoice on FOB terms and schedule production.
5. We share the loading date, vessel and shipping documents before departure.

What we manufacture

PE foam and finished products, made in our own factory in Yeoju, Korea: self-adhesive insulation wallpaper, 3D foam brick and tile wall coverings, camping and picnic mats, play mats and living mats. OEM and private-label production with custom sizes, thicknesses, colours, printing and packaging.

Our products are on shelves at Costco Japan, Daiso Japan and Ace Hardware, and we have exported to 25 countries. The largest of those relationships began, like everything else, with a first order that was smaller than either side expected.

If you are still deciding

Being unsure is not a reason to wait. It is the reason to send a short email and find out what a trial would actually cost.

Chang-Hoon Lee
Director of Marketing, QONE Corporation
Email: chl@qone.kr
Web: qone.kr