The unit price on a factory quotation is the number everyone remembers — and the least useful one on the page. Whether factory-direct sourcing actually saves money is decided by three things that rarely appear in the first email: the minimum order quantity, the quality control regime, and the fully landed cost of getting compliant product into the UK.
MOQs are a negotiation, not a fact
Most published MOQs are opening positions. Factories will often run smaller batches for a first order, a higher unit price, or a shared production slot — but only if you are talking to the decision-maker rather than a trading company in the middle. This is where a long-standing relationship changes the conversation: a factory that knows repeat business is coming treats a small first run as an investment, not an inconvenience.
Quality control happens before shipment, or not at all
Once goods are on the water, your leverage is gone. Meaningful QC means agreeing the specification in writing, inspecting during production for a first run, and a pre-shipment inspection against an agreed defect standard. For electronics, that includes functional testing on a sample basis — not just a box count.
The cost of proper inspection is typically one to two percent of order value. The cost of a container of out-of-spec devices is the whole container, plus the customers you let down while you argue about it.
Landed cost is the only price that matters
Freight, duty, VAT deferment, compliance testing, certification marks, warranty provision and returns handling all sit between the ex-works price and what a unit really costs in your warehouse. On low-value hardware, these can add thirty to fifty percent. A factory-direct price that looks twenty percent cheaper can quietly become more expensive than buying from a UK distributor once everything lands.
Getting it right
Take 2 Technology has bought factory-direct from Asia for over thirty years — negotiating MOQs, running QC on the ground, and handling freight, duty and UK compliance so the landed cost is known before the order is placed. If you are weighing factory-direct against distribution for a hardware project, we can price both routes honestly.