MOQ is 300 sets per design for preschool and elementary, 500–1,000 sets for middle and high school, and 100–300 sets for robotics and electronics, where the MOQ is set by the electronics assembly rather than the plastic. The more useful unit for this category is the classroom: a school typically orders 24–30 kits per class or several hundred for a grade band, so a 300-set MOQ is usually three to twelve classrooms — comfortably inside a single school’s or a small district’s requirement. Tell us the number of classrooms and the grade band and we will tell you what is workable.

Yes, and you should expect this to be a requirement rather than a preference. Institutional buyers purchase through formal procurement, so we issue quotes and invoices on request and work to purchase orders rather than card payments. We provide W-9, vendor documentation, business registration and proof of product liability insurance, and we complete vendor application forms — if we are not yet on your district’s approved list, send us the form or the link to the application and we will complete it. One practical point worth raising early: most US district fiscal years run July to June, so a quote approved in spring may not become spendable until the new financial year. If you are supplying several schools in one district, ask whether purchasing is centralised or per school, because that changes both the approval path and the price.

Yes, and it is included at no separate charge. We write the teacher guide to your specification and to the standards you name, with setup time, difficulty level, materials list, expected results and troubleshooting, and we include printed copies in every carton plus a digital version for the district. We also produce a curriculum mapping document showing which standards each kit addresses, because districts cannot justify expenditure without a curriculum link. If you need the guide in your district’s own template, say so at the sample stage rather than after production. If you are competing against an established supplier, this document is usually where the decision is made — not on price.

Reordering is the reason this category is worth building a business in rather than treating as a one-off order. Every project-based kit consumes its own materials — seeds, batteries, test strips, wood stock, chemical sachets, film canisters — so a kit that works well in a classroom is not a one-time purchase but a durable component plus a recurring consumable. We price and pack those two separately so a school can reorder the consumables without re-buying the kit. That converts their budget from capital to operating and removes the procurement work entirely. We can set it up as a standing order by term. If you sell the kit as a sealed one-off you get a single transaction; if you split it you get years of them.

Basic plastics and craft-based kits run USD 2.50–6.00, electronics and robotics USD 6.00–15.00, and advanced or custom laboratory kits USD 15–40 — component cost dominates far more than plastic, so a robotics kit at USD 12 and a construction kit at USD 4 are not competing products. For budgeting per classroom, multiply your chosen kit price by 24–30 and add a consumables allowance, because the refill line is what recurs. Commission is 5–8% of order value, shown as a separate line on the quotation. One thing that catches buyers out: specify whether you are quoting per student or per class set before we quote, because that alone can make the same product look 30% different.

We supply against ASTM F963 and CPC for the United States, EN71-1/-2/-3 and CE for the European Union, and UKCA for the United Kingdom, compiled as a documentation pack rather than assembled on request. Chemistry and experiment kits carry the most overhead: any kit with liquids, powders or reagents needs labelled bottles, safety data sheets and age-appropriate handling instructions inside the box, and some districts prohibit particular reagents outright — which is why we ask for the destination jurisdiction before quoting. Under three, small-part testing under EN71-1 and EN71-2 is not optional and a failure at customs is a total loss on that line rather than a delay. Certificates are issued per factory and material combination, so repeat orders carry no new cost.

Production runs 25–40 días after sample approval — longer than consumer toys because of documentation, kitting and carton work — and add 7–10 days if you need a customised teacher guide or district branding. Samples typically take 7–12 days. Ocean freight to US ports is 30–45 days; air is 7–10 working days at a premium. The practical answer is to plan backward from the teaching date rather than forward from the order date. For a September start in the US, that means ordering in May or earlier. If your date is tight, tell us before we quote, because the honest answer may be that air freight on the full order is the only way to make it — and that is better established beforehand than discovered afterwards.

Yes, at USD 3,000–8,000 per design in tooling and sampling, MOQ from 1,000 sets, and 30–45 days of development. The honest caveat: this is worth doing only where the district is committed to a multi-year programme. For a single year’s purchase, specifying an existing kit to your requirements is cheaper and faster, and it is what we would usually recommend. What we can do without custom tooling is often more useful than a new mould — re-specifying components, quantities, packaging and the teacher guide to your curriculum and your standards, at a fraction of the cost.

 Yes, with two things flagged before you order rather than after. First, robotics and electronics carry battery and EMC documentation requirements on top of the toy testing, which we plan in from the sample stage. Second, school robotics programmes need a spare-parts pathway, because a damaged sensor ends a term of work rather than one lesson. We supply spare controllers, sensors, motors and cables separately from the kit, and we can hold a spare-parts stock against your programme. We are also based in Yiwu and Shantou, so replacement parts are on the ground with the factories rather than being shipped from another continent — which is what makes a mid-term replacement realistic.