Why suppliers set them
Setup cost. A label change, a production run, or a custom fill carries fixed cost that has to be spread across units. The smaller the order, the worse that arithmetic gets for the supplier.
What a minimum tells you about a supplier
A high minimum is not a quality signal, and a low one is not a red flag. It tells you which stage of buyer the supplier is built to serve. A thousand‑unit minimum means they are optimized for established brands reordering; a per‑unit lane means they are willing to carry the inventory risk so a new operator does not have to.
The question to ask
Not “what is your MOQ” but “what is your MOQ on each lane”. Wholesale,
white label and custom runs almost always carry different numbers, and the low one is often
available on a lane nobody mentioned.