Why Do Cabinet Door Suppliers Have A Minimum Order Quantity?
Why do cabinet door suppliers have a minimum order quantity? Learn how MOQs work and what options you have when you only need a few doors.
Whether you’re a contractor, cabinet maker, or homeowner, you’re here because you only need a few cabinet doors, but your cabinet door supplier has a minimum order quantity. Now, they’re pushing you to add more to your order, pay a fee, or start over with a new supplier. This requirement feels frustrating and unnecessary when you’re trying to keep a project on track.
At Cutting Edge, we work with thousands of contractors, cabinet makers, and homeowners every year. We understand cabinet door manufacturing from the inside and the pressure you face on the job site. We’ve seen how minimum order quantities are used, why they exist, and how often they create problems when you want to get a job finished.
In this article, you’ll discover why cabinet door suppliers use minimum order quantities and what that means for you. You’ll learn:
Cabinet Door Suppliers Have A Minimum Order Quantity To Ensure Profit
At its core, a minimum order quantity exists to help a supplier make a profit on every job. Like all manufacturing, cabinet door manufacturing involves fixed costs that the order size doesn’t affect. When an order is too small, those costs can quickly outweigh the revenue from the job.
However, that explanation won’t help much if you’re unfamiliar with manufacturing. So, let’s dive deeper to explore how minimum order quantities actually help cover costs.
Minimum Order Quantity Covers Setup Costs For Cabinet Doors
Before your supplier can cut a single cabinet door, a lot of work happens behind the scenes. Their team may have to program machines, change tooling, and set up for the correct profiles.
This setup process takes time and skilled labour, whether you’re ordering two cabinet doors or twenty. Because the setup effort stays mostly the same, small orders end up carrying a much higher cost per door. A minimum order quantity helps suppliers spread that setup cost across more doors, making each job financially viable.
A minimum order quantity helps spread setup costs across more cabinet doors.
Minimum Order Quantity Reduces Material Waste
Depending on the style of your cabinet doors, the material may come from large sheets of plywood. When you cut a small order from a full sheet, there is often leftover material that cannot be used efficiently for another job.
This waste still costs the supplier money in two main ways:
- They have to store the leftover material or pay to dispose of it
- They paid for the full sheet of material, and didn’t use it all
Larger orders allow manufacturers to plan cuts more efficiently, reducing waste and improving yield. A minimum order quantity helps ensure that material costs stay predictable and manageable.
Minimum order quantities help suppliers recover the full cost of materials by reducing waste from small, inefficient runs.
Minimum Order Quantity Supports Efficient Production Flow
Most cabinet door suppliers rely on lean manufacturing principles. That means they aim to keep machines running smoothly, reduce downtime, and avoid frequent interruptions or tooling changes.
Small orders disrupt production schedules, slow down larger runs, and increase handling time. By setting a minimum order quantity, suppliers can batch similar cabinet doors together, improving efficiency and lowering overall production costs.
Minimum order quantities help maintain efficient workflows, which keep overall production costs under control.
Minimum Order Quantity Helps Manage Labour Costs
Skilled labour is one of the most expensive parts of cabinet door manufacturing. Every order requires human involvement for quality checks, sanding, finishing, packaging, and shipping preparation.
Even the smallest order still needs this attention. When an order is too small, the labour cost per door becomes difficult to justify. A minimum order quantity helps suppliers ensure that labour time is used efficiently across each job.
Minimum order quantities ensure labour time is spread across enough cabinet doors to keep costs sustainable.
What Happens When You Run Into a Minimum Order Quantity
While minimum order quantities make sense from a manufacturing perspective, they often create challenges for buyers. As a contractor, cabinet maker, or homeowner, your needs might not align with production efficiency. You may only need a few cabinet doors to complete a repair, match an existing kitchen, or finish a custom project.
When your supplier has a minimum order quantity, you’re usually left with three realistic options.
- Order more cabinet doors than you need. This may solve the supplier’s problem, but it ties up your cash and often creates storage issues.
- Pay a small order fee. However, these fees may be unpredictable and are not always available.
- Find a new cabinet door supplier. This option introduces risk because you must learn your new supplier’s process, profile codes, quality, lead times, and communication.
Minimum order quantities solve an internal supplier problem, but they make it harder for you to complete your projects on time and under budget.
How To Choose What To Do Next
When you run into a minimum order quantity, there isn’t a single right choice. The best option depends on your situation and workflow, as well as how often this problem comes up. Let’s look at each of the three common scenarios and how to decide if they make sense for you.
Option 1: Order More Cabinet Doors Than You Need
Ordering extra cabinet doors can make sense if you know you’ll use them soon. For example, if you have another project coming up, batching the doors for both projects can get you over the minimum order quantity. In this case, the extra cost is more of an advance investment than wasted spending.
However, this option becomes a problem if you don’t have another job confirmed, have limited storage space, or your cash flow is tight. Ordering more than you need to meet a minimum order quantity can quickly eat into margins and create clutter that never gets used.
Option 2: Pay A Small Order Fee
Some cabinet door suppliers allow you to bypass a minimum order quantity by paying a small order fee. This can be a reasonable solution for situations such as emergency replacements or last-minute fixes where speed matters more than the cost.
That said, small order fees add up quickly if this issue occurs frequently. Many suppliers don’t clearly advertise these fees, which can lead to surprises at checkout.
Option 3: Find A New Cabinet Door Supplier
Switching cabinet door suppliers is often the best long-term solution, but it’s also the biggest risk. This option makes sense if minimum order quantities are causing repeated delays, forcing you to overspend, or adding stress to your projects. A supplier that can handle small orders efficiently may save you time, money, and frustration over the long run.
Before switching, it’s important to consider more than just minimum order quantities. Quality, lead times, communication, and reliability all matter. If minimum order quantities are only one of several ongoing frustrations, it may be worth taking a closer look at your supplier relationship.
Find A Cabinet Door Supplier With No Minimum Order Quantity
Minimum order quantities exist because cabinet door suppliers need to cover setup time, labour, material waste, and production efficiency. These rules help suppliers stay profitable, but they often create frustration for buyers who only need a few cabinet doors. If you’ve ever felt stuck choosing between ordering more than you need or paying extra fees, you’re not alone, and your frustration is justified.
At Cutting Edge, we understand these challenges and have built our process to support your real-world needs. If you’re tired of minimum order quantity restrictions, your next step is to discover why Cutting Edge has no minimum order quantity requirements and see how a true supply partner can help you finish jobs on time, with less stress.
