MOQ of Custom Bone China Mugs

This article applies to custom bone china mugs, custom bone china cup and saucer set, custom bone china plates and so on.

Introduction

When it comes to custom bone china mugs, the most frequently asked question we get every day is, what’s your price? The second question is, what is your MOQ(minimum order quantity)? Neither of the two questions can be answered in a single sentence. In this article, we are going to explain the MOQ issue, hope to make it clear once and for all.

(Bone China Mugs)

Let’s start with a quick overview of the custom bone china mugs’ process. Check detail here, How to develop promotional bone china mugs project?

First, we need to prepare white bone china mugs and the decal, the decal sheet is what we used to decorate the surface of the bone China mugs and realize the design provided by the customer to get the ideal effect. We will cut and paste the decal paper on the surface of the white bone china mugs, and then after firing, packaging, and finally you will get the bone china mugs with your own designs.

Of course, as it seems easy, the actual production process will be much more complicated than that. But you don’t need to know the details and exact steps, as that’s why you are looking for a professional bone china mugs manufacturer to get the job done for you.

MOQ Classification

The minimum order quantity includes two classifications, MOQ for the white bone china mugs and MOQ for the decals.

1.MOQ for white bone china mugs

For custom-made bone china mugs shape, the minimum order quantity usually is 5,000. In general, we recommend our existing bone china mugs shapes, our existing bone china mugs are available in a wide variety of shapes, covering a wide variety of shapes commonly available on the market to meet the needs of different customers. Below are some of our existing bone China mugs shapes. Choosing from our existing bone china mugs have a lot of advantages, lower cost- we don’t need to develop new mold, faster production time- most of them and lower initial order.s. So we can start at 1,000 or less.

2. MOQ for bone china decal

While the choice of white bone china mugs is quite flexible, the decal is another story.

As the decal sheet is almost all custom made according to customer requirements, there is no ready stock(here we just discuss first time customizing), so the decal paper part has more quantitative requirements.

(1) Decal

To get started, a brief introduction, what is a decal?

Decal paper is mainly used to decorate the surface of bone China products, that’s how we do custom design.

Bone China products can be divided into flat items and curved items, such as bone china plate is flat, while mugs are of the curved surface, which is quite obvious and easy to understand. For the bone China flat plates, we just need to make sure the design in accordance with the size, with the white bone china mugs, for surface, we need to protect the surface onto a flat surface.

For the bone china mug below, we need to expand the surface into a rectangle, and then design a pattern on the top of the rectangle, and that’s the first step of making the decal paper.

(2) How is it made?

According to the design of the bone china products, we will combine the patterns of the bone china items, the designs, and drawings provided by the clients. After the steps of color separation, plate making, etc. , we will print the special paper or plastic film with the special ink made of special pigments, to make a special paper which is called decal paper.

The decal paper production process is divided into on-glaze color, in-glaze color, under-glaze color. Different processes have their own advantages and disadvantages. The most common way we use is on-glaze color as on-glaze gives us more color options, and the colors look more vivid.

Here comes the part that you are most interested in.

(3) MOQ  of decal

The production of decal paper involves a series of processes, check the making process, each decal paper sheet is of the size 700*500 mm. Within this area, we can layout different items with customer’s designs, like mugs, plates, etc. In order to better control the cost, the decal production manufacturers require the minimum order is 200 sheets, attention, it is based on each design. This is the major factor we use of measuring a bone china project is worth developing or not.

To help you understand it, let’s look at the below example. This sheet is a typical bone china mugs layout, the bone china mug is of the shape as the picture. From the layout we can see, to get the maximum use of the layout space, we can lay at least 8 mugs in just one sheet, and in the below cases, it’s 10 mugs with no extra space left for anything else.

In the above layout, there are 10 mugs in 1 sheet.

Still, confused? Let’s look at another example.

In the above sheet, we lay 3pcs of 8inch plates, 5 pcs of the 6-inch plate, and 5 spoons. While the MOQ of the sheet is 200, you can do the math of MOQ of each item.

Below are some figures we used when clients ask about the MOQ for just one typical product.

Bone china Mugs.  —-1000pcs

Cup and saucer set. —-1000sets

8 Inch plate. —-1000pcs

Ways to decrease the MOQ

While the number seems quite large for start-ups, is there any way to decrease the number somehow?

The answer is yes.

Below are 3 options if the above quantity is way too big for you to start.

(1) Option 1

Instead of just custom bone china mugs, we can start with a series of bone china products. Here is the thing, in the example given above, if we just print the mug, the quantity for the mug would be 2000, but if we lay different product in a sheet, such as the bone china cup and saucer set, 10-inch dinner plate, 8-inch side plate, each one in the layout, the final quantity would be just 200 when we print 200 sheets. It’s also a feasible method for marketing, give customers more choices and if they like the design, they tend to purchase the whole set.

(2) Option 2

When the design is relatively simple, here the simple mainly refers to the color, such as the design only has 1-2 colors, then we can get several designs developed together by putting them on the same layout. So that quantity of initial order of each design reduced.

(3) Option 3

Accept some increased cost of each unit.

There is no doubt that big quantity always means a better price, but if we can’t do 1000, we can do 500. When we can’t reach the MOQ, there is an all-covered cost charged for the decals, which means the cost of developing decal for 1000 and 500 is the same, if we only produce 500 pcs, the unit cost of each mug will increase. For example, consider the cost of developing the decal is 600 USD for 1000 pcs mugs, the decal cost of each mug would be 600/1000=0.6, while when we only do 500 pcs, the decal cost of each mug comes to 600/500=1.2 USD.

From the example, you can see that the price we quote for custom bone china mugs is based on the actual cost, and we always try to get down to the base price and help the customers reduce the cost as much as possible. Usually, the price range we quote is between 2-4 USD, while most of the customers can sell them at the price of 19.99 USD or even more.

(4) Option 4

If your design is just of 1-2 colors, we can start with a small quantity like 500.

For quantity less than that, we would recommend you reconsider before starting the project as the cost would be even more for each product, not only for the production, but also for freight, transportation fees, and other cost caused by international trade, such as import taxes, all these factors need to be considered. And if the price is too high, it would impact on market competitiveness with no doubt.

Conclusion

When you have the idea of custom bone china mugs with your own designs, instead of asking us what’s your MOQ, you can just tell us the approximate quantity you can accept, What is the scope of your cost control? What are your other demands? The more specific, the better. And then our quotation can also be adjusted according to your requirements. In this way, we can truly customize the project according to your requirements, not only just custom bone china mugs but help you develop a product that will truly help your business. We believe that other than a super low price, you pay more attention to the effect of the design and the quality of the product, and more importantly, whether our products or service can be qualified as a great partner.

We hope the above information helped you understand the making process of custom bone china mugs and explained the MOQ clearly for you. Feel free to let us know if you have any more concerns regarding the topic. At last, if you have any demand for custom bone china mugs, or you are looking for a professional supplier with your current on-going bone china products business, don’t hesitate to contact us.