Expect a minimum order of 125 to 250 frames from most custom plate frame suppliers. Published examples: Sid Savage lists a 125-piece minimum on 2-color premium plastic frames, while The Dealership Store and US Auto Supplies both publish 250-piece minimums on printed frames. Frontline Frames' minimum is 250 frames. Minimums exist because setup work costs the same whether you order 50 frames or 5,000 — though a supplier that charges no setup fee, as we don't, has less of that cost to recover in the first place.
What minimum order quantity should a dealership expect?
250 pieces is the most common published minimum in the dealer supply market, with 125 available on some product lines. Below that, most suppliers will either decline the job or price it so the setup cost is absorbed into a small number of units, which makes the per-frame price uncompetitive.
| Supplier | Product | Published minimum |
|---|---|---|
| Sid Savage | 2-color premium plastic frames | 125 |
| The Dealership Store | Custom screen-printed frames | 250 |
| US Auto Supplies | Motorcycle dealer frames, silkscreen | 250 |
| MBR Marketing | Custom molded chrome-plated plastic | Quantity options from 250 up to 20,000 |
Those are the minimums each company published on its own site at the time of writing. Minimums also vary by product line within a single supplier - a 2-color frame often carries a different minimum than a 1-color frame from the same company.
Why do minimum order quantities exist at all?
Because a large share of the cost is fixed. Preparing artwork, burning a screen, cutting tooling and setting up the press take the same time for a 100-piece run as for a 2,500-piece run. Spread over too few frames, that fixed cost swamps the unit price.
The arithmetic is blunt. A $200 setup fee - the amount Car Dealer Depot publishes on its chrome-plated plastic frames - adds $0.80 per unit across 250 frames and $4.00 per unit across 50. On a frame whose material cost is under $2, that turns a cheap product into an expensive one.
Minimums are not a negotiating tactic. They are the point below which the supplier cannot deliver a price that makes sense to either party.
How does the minimum change with material and decoration?
Higher-setup processes carry higher minimums. Silkscreen printing has modest setup, so minimums stay low. Raised or recessed lettering requires a mold, which is expensive to cut, so minimums climb. Metal frames with etching sit in between, depending on the process.
| Type | Typical minimum | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1-color screen-printed plastic | Lowest in the category | One screen, fast setup |
| 2-color screen-printed plastic | Higher than 1-color | Second screen and second press pass |
| Chrome-faced plastic | Similar to printed plastic | Same decoration process on a plated part |
| Raised or recessed letter | Higher | Requires tooling or a mold |
| Etched or engraved metal | Varies by supplier | Per-unit process cost dominates |
Is 250 frames too many for a small dealership?
Rarely. 250 frames is under a year of stock for most stores once you count used vehicles, service loaners and employee cars alongside new deliveries. NADA's 2025 data showed 16,990 franchised light-vehicle dealers selling 16.2 million light-duty vehicles in 2025 - an average near 950 new units per rooftop before any used volume.
Independent used-car lots and small rural stores are the genuine edge case. If you deliver 8-10 cars a month, 250 frames is roughly two years of supply, which is long enough that a phone number or website change could strand part of it.
For those stores the answer is usually to order the minimum with artwork you are confident will not change - name and city rather than a phone number and a URL that might move.
What are your options if you need fewer than the minimum?
There are four realistic paths, and one of them is usually just ordering the minimum.
- Order the minimum with durable artwork. Drop the phone number and any promotional text so the stock stays usable for years.
- Find a supplier with a lower published minimum. 125-piece minimums exist on some plastic product lines.
- Choose a lower-setup decoration. One-color silkscreen carries the lowest minimums; raised lettering the highest.
- Split the run across rooftops or a dealer group. Only works if the artwork is genuinely shared.
What does not work well is chasing a supplier who accepts a 50-piece order at a high per-unit price. You end up paying metal-frame money for a plastic frame because the setup cost has nowhere to go.
Should you order more than the minimum to get a better price?
Only up to about 1,000 units. Volume discounts in this category are front-loaded: US Auto Supplies' published tiers drop 28% per unit between 250 and 1,000, but WSIADA's published tiers move only $0.08 per frame between 1,000 and 2,500. Past a thousand, you are trading real cash for pennies.
Size the order to 12-18 months of deliveries. That captures nearly all of the available discount while limiting your exposure to a rebrand, an ownership change or a new website. If the reason you are tempted to over-order is that reordering is a hassle, a recurring shipping schedule fixes that more cheaply than a bigger pallet does.
Do minimums apply per order or per artwork?
Per artwork, in almost every case. If you want two designs - one for your new-car store and one for your used lot - you generally need to meet the minimum on each, because each design requires its own screen, its own setup and its own press run. One purchase order does not merge two minimums.
This catches dealer groups constantly. A group ordering 2,500 frames across ten rooftops with ten different store names is not placing a 2,500-piece order; it is placing ten 250-piece orders that happen to share an invoice, and the setup charges often follow the artwork rather than the invoice.
The fix is artwork discipline. Design one frame per brand rather than one per rooftop, and let the group website or brand name carry the identity instead of a store-specific phone number. Fewer variants means fewer minimums, fewer setup charges and a lower landed cost across every store.
Do minimums drop on reorders?
Sometimes, because the setup work is already done. If your screen or tooling is still on file and the artwork has not changed, some suppliers will accept a smaller repeat run than they would accept for a first order. It is worth asking explicitly rather than assuming.
Two questions decide this. First, how long does the supplier retain screens and tooling for an inactive account - some retire unused tooling after a period, at which point you are a new order again. Second, what counts as an artwork change; a new URL may be enough to reset both the minimum and the setup fee.
If you expect small, frequent reorders, that combination matters more than the first-order price. A supplier with a slightly higher unit price and a genuinely low repeat minimum can be cheaper across five years than one that treats every order as new.
What is the minimum at Frontline Frames?
250 frames. That is the minimum for any configuration, and it sits at the upper end of the 125 to 250 range published across the suppliers above — with the difference that no setup fee is amortized across it. Pricing is volume-tiered from there and shown live in the builder: configure the frame, enter a quantity, and the number appears without a sales call.
We manufacture in the USA in high-quality plastic and in metal with standard chrome, black powder-coat, polished chrome and antique pewter finishes. Lead time is 2-3 weeks from order confirmation, and you can order as a one-off bulk run or on a recurring subscription that ships monthly, bimonthly, quarterly or semiannually. The FAQ covers artwork requirements, and how it works walks through the ordering steps.