MOQ is three numbers wearing one label
Ask a supplier for the MOQ on a 55-inch 3.5 mm video wall panel and the answer is usually four pieces. Ask the same person for a 2.6 mm cabinet and it becomes twenty. Ask for the wall brackets on their own and it might be fifty sets. All three are correct, because the word covers three different minimums.
Panel minimum comes from how glass is bought. Panels arrive in cartons of a fixed count, and a 2×2 wall is the smallest arrangement that can be built, tested and packed as a set. Below four, you are usually buying from a distributor rather than a factory, and the unit price reflects it.
Cabinet minimum is a tooling question. A standard cabinet is in stock. A custom size, a custom colour, or a pitch the line does not run every week means the jig has to be set, and that batch has to be worth running — ten to twenty cabinets, sometimes a full square metre.
Accessory minimum is the one that catches people. Spare modules, brackets and power cables are often quoted separately, and a nine-panel wall with a 3% spare policy and fifty-bracket minimums can carry more freight than the panels.
The practical consequence: if you need four panels, buy a standard size and a standard pitch, and accept whichever bezel is in stock. Custom anything at four pieces is a losing negotiation.
The deposit is 30/70, until it is not
The default is 30% against the proforma invoice and 70% against a copy of the bill of lading. That split exists because the factory has to buy panels, and the buyer does not want to pay in full for goods he has not seen loaded.
Three things move it. Custom work — a non-standard cabinet, a custom colour, a printed logo on the frame — pushes the deposit to 50%, because that material cannot be resold to anyone else. Small first orders below a few thousand dollars often go to 50% or 100%, not from distrust but because the bank charges eat the margin twice. Repeat buyers with a history behind them sometimes get 20%, or a balance due 30 days after arrival.
The percentage matters less than the sentence after it. An invoice reading "30% deposit, balance before shipment" and nothing else gives the buyer no exit if the goods arrive six weeks late. Worth adding: the deposit is refunded in full if shipment does not happen within a stated number of days of the confirmed date, and the balance falls due against a bill of lading copy rather than a photo of a container.
Lead time is four clocks, and only one of them is production
When a supplier says fifteen days, that is the production line talking. Four clocks run in sequence, and the buyer only ever experiences the sum.
| Stage | Typical duration | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Panel allocation | 0 to 21 days | Panel stock position, not the salesperson |
| Production | 7 to 20 days | Line schedule and whether the cabinet is custom |
| Burn-in and QC | 3 to 5 days | How seriously the factory tests |
| Freight | 20 to 35 days by sea, 5 to 7 by air | Sailing schedule, port, customs |
Panel allocation is the variable nobody quotes. If that exact brightness and bezel sits in the warehouse today, this is zero. If not, the factory is waiting on a panel shipment like everyone else, and the wait can be three weeks. The question to ask is blunt: is this panel in your warehouse right now, yes or no.
Production for a standard 2×2 or 3×3 is seven to twelve days. A custom cabinet run is fifteen to twenty. Burn-in and QC is where a careful factory spends 72 hours running the wall before packing; a supplier who ships the same day has skipped it, and the first thing you find on site is a module that dies in week two.
Freight is the long one. Sea from Shenzhen to Rotterdam runs around 30 days door-to-door, to Los Angeles about 20. Air is five to seven days and costs several times more per kilogram, which rules out a 3×3 wall in flight cases.
One 3×3 indoor project quoted at 15 days and landed 41 days after deposit. Production took 11. The other 30 were nine days of panel allocation and a missed sailing. None of that appeared in the quotation, and all of it was knowable at the time.
The two clauses that get read again after something goes wrong
Purchase contracts for displays are short and mostly boilerplate. Two clauses come back out of the drawer.
Dead pixel standard. "A-grade panel" on its own means nothing. Put numbers in the contract: zero bright sub-pixels in the central third of the screen, no more than three defective pixels per million across the panel, and no two adjacent defects anywhere. Then state the remedy: a panel exceeding those limits is replaced in the next shipment with freight paid by the supplier.
Spare modules. Three percent of the panel count, rounded up, packed in the same container. A 3×3 wall gets one, a 4×4 gets one or two. Without the clause the spare arrives six weeks later by air at your expense, and the wall sits there with a black rectangle in it.
Two smaller ones worth adding: warranty starts at the date of site acceptance rather than the date of the bill of lading, and transport damage is photographed and claimed within seven days of arrival with the carrier’s report attached.
Payment methods, and the fee hiding in each
The method changes what you pay more than most buyers expect, because the fees come out of somebody’s margin.
| Method | Cost | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|
| T/T bank transfer | USD 30 to 50 per side | Almost every production order |
| Letter of credit | 0.1 to 0.5% of value plus fixed charges | Above roughly USD 50,000 |
| PayPal | 3.5 to 4.4% plus currency spread | Samples and spares only |
| Western Union | Buyer pays, seller has no chargeback risk | Rarely justified on production |
T/T is the default. Bank charges of USD 30–50 on each side, usually split so the buyer pays the sending bank and the supplier absorbs the receiving one. Confirm that in writing, because "all bank charges for buyer’s account" is a small line that compounds on repeat orders.
L/C earns its cost above roughly USD 50,000. Below that, issuing and advising fees usually exceed the protection you get. PayPal is for samples: the merchant fee plus the currency spread is real money on a five-figure invoice.
Western Union shows up in some quotations because it clears instantly. It also leaves the buyer with almost no recourse, and a factory insisting on it for a production order is telling you something about how it expects the relationship to go.
If the supplier quotes in RMB and ships from China, paying in RMB removes one currency conversion. It does not lower the unit price, whatever the salesperson implies.
What to ask for before the deposit leaves
Five documents, none of which cost the supplier money to produce, and each one closes a specific way the order can go wrong.
- A specification sheet carrying the panel model number, not just brightness and bezel width. The model number lets you pull the datasheet yourself and compare like with like.
- One module, shipped as a sample, with the brightness and colour report for that batch. A 300 cd/m² claim is easy to print; proving it on the piece you will receive is not.
- Two minutes of phone video from the line and the burn-in room. No editing, no catalogue music. It tells you more than any brochure.
- Scanned certificates with reference numbers you can look up. CE and FCC declarations carry numbers; a certificate without one is a design document, not a certification.
- A spare parts price list. Module, power supply, receiving card, sending card. You will not need it this year and you will want it in year three.
None of this is a guarantee. All of it shortens the conversation when something is not right, which is the only thing a contract is really for.
Where to go next
How a video wall quotation is actually built up Dead pixel policy: what A-grade really means Import duty and customs for LED screens Video wall products