Why 350 pieces, and what a dye lot actually is
Minimums are not a mill being difficult. They are the size of a dye lot. Here is why ours is 350 of a colour, why it can be split across sizes, and why other mills say 1,000.
Updated 2026-10-07
The minimum is a dye lot, not a policy
Cloth is dyed in batches. A batch has a size below which the machine cannot run evenly, and two batches of the same colour are never quite identical — which is why a careful brand keeps one order in one lot. So a mill's minimum is mostly the size of its smallest honest dye lot, plus the cutting and sewing it takes to turn that cloth into pieces. When a supplier says 3,000, that is usually what their dyehouse is set up for. It is not greed; it is their machine.
350 of a colour, and the word colour is the important one
Our minimum is 350 pieces per colour. Three colours is three dye lots and three times the minimum, because that is genuinely three separate runs on the floor. For a first order this is usually the wrong instinct anyway. One colour proves the listing — the photographs, the reviews, the reorder rate — before you tie up cash in a second. White is forty per cent of what the German market buys, and it is where most ranges start.
What 350 lets you actually do
The 350 is per colour, not per size. Two hundred cot sheets at 60 × 120 and a hundred and fifty at 70 × 140, both in white, is one colour, one dye lot and one minimum. That is the part most buyers do not expect, and it is the part that makes a small first order sensible: you can cover two or three sizes of a range without committing to volume in any of them. Add a second size in the configurator and you will see the price of the first one fall, because freight follows the shipment rather than the line.
What volume changes, and what it does not
Price falls with quantity, but less than people expect, and most of the fall is freight rather than goods. The cloth, the sewing and the elastic cost what they cost; the lorry is the part that gets cheaper per piece when it is full. So do not order 1,600 to chase a discount you have not calculated. Put the quantity into the calculator on this site and read the difference before you decide — it is the same arithmetic we use, and it is on the page without a form in front of it.
Before the 350: the sample
A sample pack of three qualities and the colour card is 180 € and ships in fourteen days. It is credited against your first order, so if you go ahead it costs you nothing in the end. If the fabric is not right, that is where it ends and you are out the sample rather than the order. That is the whole reason the sample exists, and it is why we would rather sell you one than talk you into 350 pieces of a cloth you have not touched.
Orientation from a factory that ships into the EU every week, not legal advice. The rules below are named so you can look them up, and your own advisor should confirm anything you are about to print on a label.