Wholesale & Bulk Orders

Buy Vietnamese Lanterns Wholesale: A Factory-Direct Guide for International Buyers

Updated June 2026 · By the LongDenViet workshop, Ho Chi Minh City

Most wholesale lanterns that reach international buyers have passed through two or three hands — a local market seller, a trading company, an importer. Each adds a margin. By the time the lanterns reach you the price has little relationship to what the workshop actually charges.

Buying direct means you pay the workshop price. It also means you choose the shape, colour and size at source — not from a pre-made catalogue someone else compiled. If you want the round garlic lantern in dusty rose with a 40 cm diameter and your hotel logo on the fabric, that conversation happens with the people who actually make it, not someone relaying messages across a supply chain.

• Better price at every tier. Wholesale tiers apply to the workshop price, not the inflated trading-company price.
• Real customisation. Shape, colour, size, fabric type and logo are all configurable because we control every step of production.
• Consistent quality. You deal directly with the makers, which means quality issues are resolved in hours, not weeks of back-and-forth.
• Faster lead times. No intermediate order-processing stage. Small orders ship in 5–7 days; popular sizes often ship from stock.

The quality-control point is worth expanding on, because it is the one that matters most once an order is already in production. Buying through a trading company means any question about a specific piece — a fabric shade slightly off, a frame that arrived less taut than expected — has to travel back through that company to the workshop and then back again, and every hop adds a delay measured in days, sometimes weeks. Buying direct removes every one of those hops. If something needs adjusting mid-order, the person who can actually fix it is the person you are already messaging.

For first-time wholesale buyers who want to see the quality before committing to a full run, a physical sample is a reasonable request and one we accommodate for most orders — it is a small extra step, but it removes the single biggest source of buyer anxiety in an international order: not being able to touch or see the product before fifty or a hundred pieces are already produced and shipped.

You can see the full range on our English-language catalogue page, or send us your spec list via WhatsApp and we will put a quote together the same day. Tour operators also ask about our Hoi An lantern making workshop — a popular add-on for groups, with commission for guides and agencies.

A market stall is a perfectly reasonable way to buy two or three lanterns as a souvenir. It stops being a reasonable way to buy fifty matching lanterns for a venue opening, because a stall's stock on any given evening was never built for consistency at that scale — colours run out, dye lots differ slightly between batches, and there is no single point of contact if a piece arrives damaged. Factory-direct ordering exists specifically to remove that variability from a bulk order.

Our core range is bamboo-frame lanterns made with aged bamboo — three to five years old, salt-water soaked, dried and heat-treated to resist insects. The frame folds flat like an umbrella, opens in under a minute, and is light enough that international freight stays affordable even at scale.

For large outdoor installations — hotel courtyards, restaurant terraces, event structures — we also make lanterns with powder-coated iron frames. The frame itself is near-permanent; the fabric covering is replaceable when it fades.

Fabric options

We carry eight shapes in the standard range: garlic-bulb, round, diamond, pyramid, ribbed, umbrella, flying-saucer and hexagonal wood. All eight are available in fourteen colours and most common sizes can be mixed within a single order.

Seven of the eight — round, garlic-bulb, diamond, pyramid (banh-u), flying-saucer, umbrella and the custard-apple profile — are drawn to scale below, with the workshop starting price for each shape. The eighth, hexagonal wood, is a separate frame construction with its own smaller wholesale tier, covered in the pricing section further down.

Bamboo age is not a cosmetic detail on a wholesale order — it is the difference between a batch that arrives holding its shape and a batch that arrives with a handful of ribs already warped from humidity in transit. Three to five years of aging, followed by salt-water soaking and heat treatment, is what makes a frame stiff enough to fold flat hundreds of times and still spring back true. Buyers ordering for permanent installation rather than a single event should ask specifically about frame age when comparing suppliers — it is the one variable that does not show up in a product photo.

We do not publish a universal price list because the right price depends on four variables: shape, size, fabric type and quantity. What we can tell you is how the tiers work.

• Bamboo-frame lanterns: wholesale tiers unlock at 20, 50 and 100 pieces. Each tier brings the per-unit price down meaningfully.
• Hexagonal wood-frame lanterns: smaller frames, so the first tier starts at 10 pieces, with a second tier at 20.
• Custom fabric or logo orders: minimum 20 pieces per design. Below that the setup cost per piece makes it impractical for both sides.

Lead times follow the same logic: orders under 100 pieces take roughly 5–7 days. Larger or export-focused orders run 15–20 days. If your sizes and colours are among our most popular, we often have stock and can ship faster — worth mentioning when you send your list.

The production window scales with how many hands touch each piece, not just the total count. A 100-piece order of plain silk lanterns in one colour moves through the workshop faster than a 50-piece order split across five colours and two shapes with custom logo printing on top, because each colour and each logo variant is effectively its own small production run inside the larger order. If your timeline is fixed — a hotel opening date, a wedding weekend — say so up front, and we will tell you honestly whether the spec as written fits the deadline or needs simplifying.

Reorders move faster than first orders. Once we have your colour codes, logo proof and preferred shapes on file, a repeat order for the same specification generally skips the proofing stage entirely and goes straight to production, which is useful for hotel groups and restaurant chains replacing damaged pieces or opening a second location to match the first.

To give a concrete starting point before you send a spec list, the table below is our retail per-piece price for plain silk lanterns by diameter. Wholesale tiers at 20, 50 and 100 pieces bring this per-unit number down — the exact discount depends on shape, fabric and quantity, so treat this as the ceiling a wholesale quote works down from, not the wholesale price itself.

Fabric and finish move the number up from there in the same way they do at retail — hand-painted or embroidered designs, brocade or iron-frame construction for outdoor installations, and custom logo printing all sit above the plain-silk figure. None of that is hidden in the quote; every line item is broken out so you can see exactly what you are paying for at scale.

Hotels, restaurant groups and event companies regularly order lanterns with their logo or a bespoke pattern printed directly onto the silk or glossy fabric. The process is straightforward.

1. Send us your artwork file — vector formats (AI, SVG, EPS) are ideal; a high-resolution PNG works too. Tell us the size and placement you want.
2. We produce a digital proof showing how the logo will look on the fabric and the lantern shape you chose. You review and approve it before anything is printed.
3. Once approved, we can also produce a physical sample and send it to you before committing to the full run. Most buyers skip this step on repeat orders, but it is available.
4. After approval, production proceeds. Custom fabric orders have a minimum of 20 pieces.

Logo lanterns are used most often at hotel entrances, restaurant ambient lighting, corporate events and branded weddings. They also make unusually distinctive packaging for premium products — a lantern with your label is a gift people keep.

We do not fabricate client stories, so we will not drop brand names here. What we will say is that the same bamboo-and-silk construction we sell to individual buyers is what goes into custom orders — the quality does not change because the quantity went up.

Placement on the fabric matters more than most first-time buyers expect. A logo printed dead-centre on a round lantern looks correct in a flat mockup but reads oddly once the lantern is lit and viewed from below, which is the angle it is usually seen at in a lobby or entrance. We generally suggest positioning the mark slightly above centre, and the digital proof step exists precisely so you can see that effect before anything is printed rather than discover it after fifty pieces arrive.

Colour choice interacts with a printed logo the same way it does with a plain lantern — a dark logo on a pale fabric such as ivory or soft yellow stays legible when the lantern is lit from inside, while a logo close in tone to the fabric colour can nearly disappear once the bulb is on. If brand consistency across every venue matters to you, tell us the exact colour code you use elsewhere (Pantone or hex) and we match it as closely as the dye process allows, and flag it clearly in the proof if an exact match is not achievable on fabric.

We ship wholesale orders via DHL and FedEx from Ho Chi Minh City. Courier costs are paid separately from the lantern price; we will include the estimated freight in your quote once we know the destination country and total weight.

The fold-flat design is the reason international shipping is practical at all. Each lantern collapses to a flat disc a few centimetres thick. A box that holds fifty 30 cm lanterns is not large, and the total weight is a fraction of what a rigid craft item the same size would be.

Approximate folded weights

Payment is by bank wire transfer (TT) or PayPal. We take a deposit before production and the balance before shipment. The exact split is stated in the quote.

The deposit exists to cover the fabric and bamboo committed to your specific order the moment production starts — colours dyed or sourced for a custom logo run cannot easily be resold to another buyer if an order is cancelled midway. It is standard practice across handmade wholesale manufacturing generally, not a term unique to us, and the balance is only due once the finished batch is ready to ship, not before.

For buyers based inside Vietnam rather than shipping internationally, delivery is domestic road freight rather than DHL or FedEx, and reaches the major tourist and business cities within a day or two of dispatch from our Ho Chi Minh City workshop.

Wholesale buyers based in Hoi An itself — the town where the craft originates — are often surprised that ordering from our Ho Chi Minh City workshop is still practical. Distance is not the constraint it would be for a fragile object: the fold-flat design means a full order fits into standard freight without special handling, so location affects delivery time by a day or two, not the feasibility of the order.

1. Send your spec list. Tell us shapes, sizes, colours, fabric type (silk / brocade / glossy), quantity and delivery country. The more detail the better — if you are unsure about any of it, we can advise. Use the contact form on our English page or message us directly on WhatsApp at +84 905 151 701.
2. Receive a quote and digital proof. We return a price breakdown, lead time and estimated freight. If your order includes logo printing, a digital proof of the design on the lantern fabric is included for approval.
3. Confirm and pay the deposit. Once you are happy with the quote (and the proof, if applicable), we issue an invoice. Production starts on receipt of the deposit.
4. Production. Standard orders under 100 pieces: 5–7 days. Larger or export orders: 15–20 days. We send photos of the finished batch before shipping if requested.
5. Ship via DHL or FedEx. We pack the folded lanterns carefully, generate the shipping documents and send you the tracking number. Typical transit to Europe, the US or Australia is usually within about a week with DHL Express.

Ready to start? Visit our English catalogue to see the full range, or message us on WhatsApp with your requirements and we will get back to you the same day.

Frequently asked questions

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