Why Ordering Your Custom Notebooks 'Just to Meet MOQ' May Cost More Than You Realise
The purchase order was straightforward enough: 500 custom branded notebooks to replenish depleted stock. The supplier's MOQ sat at 300 units, so the quantity seemed reasonable. What the procurement team didn't calculate was that current inventory would last another six weeks, and the new shipment would arrive in three. The resulting nine weeks of overlapping stock—300 units sitting in storage before they were needed—accumulated carrying costs that quietly eroded the per-unit savings the order was supposed to deliver.
This scenario plays out regularly in corporate stationery procurement, and it represents one of the more persistent blind spots in MOQ decision-making. The focus tends to land on whether an order meets the supplier's minimum threshold and what per-unit price that quantity unlocks. The temporal dimension—when that inventory arrives relative to when it's actually consumed—receives far less scrutiny, despite having material impact on total cost of ownership.
From a procurement advisory perspective, the issue stems from how organisations typically frame the reorder decision. The question asked is usually "Do we have enough to justify an order?" rather than "What is the optimal moment to place this order given our consumption rate and the supplier's lead time?" The first question treats MOQ as a hurdle to clear. The second treats timing as a variable to optimise. The financial outcomes of these two approaches can differ substantially.
Inventory carrying costs for custom stationery encompass several categories that procurement teams sometimes underestimate. The obvious component is storage—warehouse space, climate control where applicable, and the administrative overhead of tracking stock. Less obvious but equally real is the cost of capital tied up in inventory that isn't generating value. When 500 notebooks sit in storage for two months before distribution, the cash used to purchase them is unavailable for other business purposes. At typical corporate cost-of-capital rates, this opportunity cost alone can add 1-2% to the effective price of goods held for extended periods.
The depreciation dimension is particularly acute for branded materials. Custom corporate stationery carries an implicit shelf life that has nothing to do with physical degradation. Rebranding initiatives, logo updates, changes in corporate messaging—any of these can transform perfectly functional inventory into obsolete stock. The longer custom items sit in storage, the greater the probability that some organisational change will reduce their utility or render them unusable entirely.
In practice, this is often where reorder timing decisions start to be misjudged. Procurement teams see that current stock is running low and that a new order will take four to six weeks to arrive. The instinct is to order immediately to avoid any risk of running out. But if current stock will actually last eight weeks, that immediate order creates two weeks of unnecessary overlap—two weeks during which the organisation is paying to store inventory it doesn't yet need.
The mathematics become more significant at scale. Consider an organisation that orders custom branded pens quarterly, with each order sized to meet a 1,000-unit MOQ. If each order arrives two weeks before the previous batch is depleted, that's eight weeks per year of carrying costs on approximately 500 units (the average overlap). At a carrying cost rate of 25% annually—a figure that includes storage, capital, insurance, and obsolescence risk—those eight weeks of unnecessary inventory represent roughly 4% of the annual spend on that product line. For organisations with substantial branded merchandise programmes, this hidden cost can reach meaningful figures.
The challenge is compounded by the relationship between MOQ and lead time. Suppliers who offer lower MOQs often have longer lead times, which forces buyers to order further in advance, which increases the probability of timing mismatches. Conversely, suppliers with shorter lead times may require higher MOQs, which increases the absolute quantity at risk if timing is miscalculated. There is no configuration that eliminates the timing challenge entirely; there is only the discipline of calculating it explicitly rather than ignoring it.
For organisations evaluating their approach to custom corporate stationery procurement, the foundational guide to MOQ considerations provides the broader framework within which these timing decisions operate. The reorder timing dimension adds a layer of complexity that deserves explicit attention in procurement planning.
The practical application of this understanding requires better data than most organisations currently maintain. Accurate consumption rates—not just annual totals, but the pattern of usage over time—are essential for calculating optimal reorder points. Lead time variability matters as well; a supplier who quotes four weeks but frequently delivers in three creates different timing dynamics than one who quotes four weeks and occasionally takes five. Safety stock calculations should account for both demand variability and supply variability, with the carrying cost of that safety stock explicitly factored into the total cost analysis.
The organisations that manage this well tend to treat reorder timing as a financial optimisation problem rather than a logistics convenience. They calculate the carrying cost of ordering early against the stockout cost of ordering late, and they place orders at the point where those two curves intersect. For custom corporate stationery, where stockout costs are typically low (most uses can tolerate short delays) and carrying costs include meaningful obsolescence risk, this optimal point often falls later than procurement teams instinctively prefer.
None of this suggests that meeting supplier MOQs is unimportant. The per-unit economics of reaching minimum thresholds remain significant. But the timing of when those thresholds are reached—and the inventory position that results—deserves equal consideration in the total cost calculation. An order that saves 15% on unit cost but arrives six weeks before it's needed may not actually deliver 15% savings once carrying costs are properly accounted.