What a 1,000-Unit Minimum Actually Means

Every wholesale supplier has a minimum order quantity, and most of them hide it until you ask. Ours is 1,000 units on every product, published on every page. That number stops some people ordering, and for a few of them it should.

Divide it by your monthly volume

The only calculation that matters is how long a thousand units lasts you. Take your orders per month and divide.

The rough threshold is around 100 orders a month. Below that, a thousand of anything is more than a year of stock, and buying it ties up cash you probably need elsewhere.

What it actually costs

The number that frightens people is the unit count, not the money. A thousand poly mailers is a smaller cheque than most people assume — it is one order of stock, not a capital investment, and every product page here publishes the exact figure before you enquire.

Work in cost per parcel rather than cost per order. A packaging spend that looks large as a single number is usually a few pence per shipment, and that is the number that belongs in your margin.

Why suppliers have minimums at all

It is not a filter for serious buyers, and it is not arbitrary. Packaging is made in production runs. Setting up a run costs the same whether it produces five hundred units or fifty thousand, so short runs carry the setup cost on very few units and the price per unit becomes absurd.

Below a certain quantity a wholesale supplier is not cheaper than a retail box shop — it is more expensive, with worse availability. The minimum is where wholesale pricing starts making sense for you, not where it starts being profitable for us.

Where a thousand units goes

The practical question people forget. A thousand mailers is smaller than expected; a thousand boxes is not.

• 1,000 poly mailers — roughly one carton. Fits on a shelf.
• 1,000 bubble mailers — four to ten cartons depending on size.
• 1,000 corrugated boxes — forty cartons, flat-packed. This is a pallet and it needs real space.
• 1,000 metres of void fill — two or three rolls.

Boxes are the one that surprises people. If you work from home, check the space before you order, not after.

If you are not ready

We would rather say so than sell you eighteen months of stock. Two honest options:

• Order one product at the minimum rather than five. Take the line you use most, buy a thousand of it, and keep buying the rest retail until your volume catches up.
• Wait. If you ship thirty orders a month, retail packaging is genuinely the right answer for now. Come back when you are past a hundred.

We do not supply samples, free or paid, and the minimum order is the smallest order we accept. A thousand units is the trial — it is enough to run the packaging properly for a few months and find out whether it suits you.

The questions worth asking before you commit

• How many months of cover is this at my current volume?
• Where will it physically live?
• Is this specification settled, or am I still experimenting with sizes?
• What is the cost per parcel, and does that work in my margin?

If those four have comfortable answers, the minimum is not a barrier. If any of them makes you hesitate, tell us which one — there is usually a sensible way through it.