RFQ vs Tech Pack: Which Do You Send First?

The confusion is understandable because both documents ask for a price. They do it in different registers. The pack says what the bag is; the RFQ says what the buyer wants to know about it — how much, by when, on what terms, to what standard. One is a specification and the other is a question, and the question is answerable only when the specification exists.

There is a practical consequence for how a buyer sequences the work. Writing a pack takes days; writing an RFQ takes an hour. A buyer who writes the RFQ first and sends it while the pack is still being finished gets the commercial conversation started early and the technical one completed properly, which is better than either order done strictly.

In practice the two travel together, and the order in the email is irrelevant. What matters is which one the buyer has actually completed. A programmatic buyer with a finished pack and a one-line RFQ will get a better number than a buyer with a beautiful RFQ and no pack.

What Is Each Document Actually For?

One way to hold the distinction is to ask what happens to each document at the end of the programme. The pack is still being read two years later, because it is the only record of what was agreed. The RFQ has done its job by then and is filed. Documents that live for different lengths of time carry different kinds of information.

The pack is a specification and it is owned by the buyer. It says geometry, materials, construction, hardware, artwork, testing and packing, and it is what a sample is built from. It does not ask for anything.

The RFQ is a request and it is also owned by the buyer. It says how many, at what target, on what Incoterm, to what standard, by when, and it asks for a response in a stated format. It is the commercial wrapper and it is the document that starts a negotiation rather than a build.

Why Does the Pack Decide Whether the Number Is Firm?

Because a quotation is calculated rather than estimated, and the inputs to the calculation are on the pack. Shell consumption comes from the panels and the marker; foam from the die; hardware from the schedule; labour from the stitch count and the operation list. None of those is knowable from a request.

A number issued without them is a number built on assumptions, and the assumptions have to be made by somebody. Where they are made by the production team they will be conservative in cost and optimistic in specification, which is the natural direction for an estimate to drift.

When Is It Right to Send an RFQ With No Pack?

When the buyer is testing whether an idea is worth pursuing, and the honest answer is that this is most of the time at the start of a programme. Asking for a firm price on a bag that has not been specified yet is asking for a number nobody can stand behind; asking for an indication is a reasonable way to decide whether to spend the days writing the pack.

The discipline is to label it. An RFQ that says "indication requested, pack to follow" gets an honest range and a list of what would firm it up. An RFQ that says nothing gets a number that will be quoted as if it were firm and then revised.

What Belongs in the RFQ That Does Not Belong in the Pack?

Everything commercial. Quantity and the split by colourway, the target price, the Incoterm and named place, the payment terms, the inspection level and who pays for it, the response deadline and the format required. None of that belongs on a specification, and all of it belongs on a request.

There is one item that belongs in both and is worth stating twice: the testing and compliance list. It appears on the pack because it is part of the specification, and it appears on the RFQ because it costs money and takes time. Stating it in both places is not redundancy; it is what stops the cost being discovered later.

What Belongs in the Pack That Does Not Belong in the RFQ?

Everything technical. Panel sizes, seam allowances, stitch types and counts, material constructions and suppliers, hardware sizes and pull figures, artwork positions and tolerances, the packing specification and the approval block. Putting any of that on the RFQ makes the RFQ long and the pack redundant.

The one exception is a short material direction on the RFQ, which is useful where no pack exists. It is a summary for costing rather than a specification, and it should be labelled as such so it is not mistaken for one.

A related trap is the sample-first approach, where a buyer sends a reference bag and asks for a price "as this". Without a pack, the number is a price for a copy of the reference, including every detail the buyer never intended to copy. Where the buyer cannot write the pack yet, the least bad answer is a reference with a written note on what is in and what is out.

There is also a sequencing point worth holding on to. The pack is not finished at the point the quotation arrives; it is finished at the point the sample is approved. Between those two moments it will change, and each change moves the price. A buyer who treats the quotation as final until sample approval is treating a moving specification as a fixed one.

How Do the Two Documents Move Through the Programme?

The pack moves by revision and the RFQ moves by reissue. Each time the specification changes, the pack gets a new letter and a new date, and the BOM behind it is reissued. The RFQ is reissued only when the commercial terms change — quantity, Incoterm, target, deadline.

Keeping those two clocks separate is what makes a programme auditable. Where a commercial change is recorded in a pack revision, the pack stops being a specification; where a specification change is recorded in a new RFQ, the RFQ stops being a request.

What Happens When They Disagree?

The pack wins on anything technical and the RFQ wins on anything commercial, and the disagreement is usually a sign that one of them is out of date. A pack that says 600D and an RFQ that says 420D is a pack revision that never happened, or an RFQ written before the change and never updated.

The fix is a rule rather than a negotiation: whichever document has the later date governs, and the other is corrected within a day. A programme that enforces that rule stops having this argument after the first time.

Where the disagreement is about something neither document covers, the gap itself is the information. An unallocated question usually means an input that belongs on one of the two documents and has never been assigned to either. Write it into the right one and the argument does not come back.

It is also worth noting what the rule does to the relationship. A buyer who corrects their own document within a day, every time, builds a record of being the party whose paperwork can be trusted — and that record is what gets a question answered quickly when the buyer is the one who needs a favour.

How Does the Sequence End?

With the pack signed, the quotation accepted in writing, and the sampling clock started at 6-10 working days. The RFQ has done its job by then and is filed with the quotation; the pack is still live and will accumulate revisions for years.

Bulk follows at 35-50 days from written sample approval, with inspection at AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1 and shipment FOB Xiamen. The pack governs what is built and inspected; the RFQ governs what it costs and when it arrives. Both are needed and neither replaces the other.

One more case is worth separating out: the buyer who has a pack but has not kept it current. A pack that is two years old and has never been revised is worse than no pack, because it looks authoritative and carries decisions nobody remembers making. Send it with a note on what has changed since, or spend the day bringing it up to date first.

How Do the Two Documents Behave When the Programme Repeats?

The pack accumulates revisions and the RFQ is reissued. On a repeat, the buyer sends the current revision of the pack with a fresh RFQ carrying the new quantity, the new target and the new date. Nothing about the specification has to be rewritten, which is the whole return on having written it properly the first time.

The second thing a repeat does is expose drift. Where the second run quotes differently from the first without a stated cause, the cause is usually a component that changed source between runs, and the pack is the only document that can show it. A repeat quoted from a fresh RFQ with no pack attached has no way to answer that question at all.

Where the repeat includes a change — a new colourway, a new hardware source, a different quantity tier — the RFQ states the change and the pack gets a revision letter for it. A repeat that bypasses the pack and goes straight to a new RFQ is how a programme quietly loses control of its own specification.

What Is the Short Answer for a Buyer in a Hurry?

Send whatever technical detail exists, however incomplete, with the commercial request in the same email, and label the technical part honestly. A pack that is 70% finished with the gaps marked is worth more than a perfect pack sent three weeks later, because the gaps produce questions and the questions can be answered in parallel.

The one thing not to do is send the RFQ alone and hope. Hope produces a number built on somebody else's assumptions, and those assumptions surface later as a revision, at the point in the programme where a revision costs the most.

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