How to Source Team Bags for a Club: RFQ Fields a Club Should Send

Why Does the Shape of an Enquiry Decide the Outcome?

Because a quotation is only as good as the information behind it. A request for quotation that says "500 team bags, navy" cannot be quoted properly — the compartment layout, the colourway split, the personalisation and the date all change the number, and all four are unknown.

The response to an incomplete enquiry is a list of questions, and each round of questions costs a week. A club that sends fifteen fields gets an answer; a club that sends one gets a correspondence.

Which Fields Actually Change the Number?

Six of the fifteen move the figure materially: quantity, silhouette count, colourway count, personalisation count, material specification and delivery term. The other nine matter, but they tend to change the plan rather than the price.

That is worth knowing because it tells a club where to spend its effort. Getting the quantity split and the colourway count right matters more than getting the packaging clause right, and both take about the same amount of time to write.

What Does the Silhouette Field Contain?

A description of the shape, the external dimensions, and either a tech pack or a sketch with dimensions on it. Where a club has an existing bag it wants to reproduce, the existing bag is the fastest possible specification — send it, or send photographs with a tape measure in frame.

The second part of the field is what the bag has to do rather than what it resembles. The sport, the kit list and the carry distance are the three inputs that actually shape the design, and they are frequently left out of an enquiry that describes the bag in detail.

How Should the Colour Field Be Completed?

With a named reference and its library, plus the substrate list. "Club navy" is not a colour specification; a reference with a library is. The substrate list — shell, lining, binding, webbing, zipper tape and thread — tells the supplier how many approvals are needed.

Where a club has a physical jersey swatch, sending it is worth the postage. A reference gives the dye house a target; a physical swatch lets the finished set be cross-checked against what the players actually wear. The method is set out in Reorder colour consistency.

What Does the Quantity Field Have to Split By?

Three ways: by style, by colourway and by personalisation. "500 bags" is not a quantity specification, because 500 of one style in one colourway is a different order from 250 of two styles.

• By style — how many player bags and how many coach or staff bags.
• By colourway — how many of each colour, and whether they share a dye lot.
• By personalisation — how many personalised, and how many held plain.
• The float — stated as a line rather than folded into the squad count.
• The reorder expectation — whether a second drop is likely, and when.

Why Does the Date Field Matter More Than the Price Field?

Because a bag delivered after the first fixture has failed. The date field should contain the date the kit has to be on the bus, not a preferred delivery week — and it should be accompanied by an acknowledgement that the calculation runs backwards from it.

Sampling runs 6-10 working days from a signed-off tech pack, extending to 12-15 working days for a complex build or a new club colour. Bulk runs 35-50 days from written sample approval. A club that supplies the fixture date lets those two windows be placed correctly; a club that supplies a preferred week does not. The reasoning is set out in Why 35 to 50 days.

Which Delivery Term Should a Club Ask For?

FOB Xiamen is the standard term and it suits a club with a freight arrangement. CIF and DDP are available where a club wants a delivered figure and does not want to manage the booking, the transit and the customs entry.

What Compliance Field Does a Club Need?

The market the bags are sold or distributed into, and the frameworks that market requires. For a general club bag that is REACH in the European Union; for a school programme it is CPSIA in the United States as well. Naming the market is enough — the evidence follows from it.

A club that also wants a voluntary label, such as OEKO-TEX, or recycled content with a transaction certificate, should say so in the enquiry rather than after the quotation. Both change the material booking and both are easier to include than to add.

How Should the Inspection Field Be Written?

As a request rather than a full checklist. The club states that inspection will run at AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1, General Inspection Level II, and that the club will supply the defect classification before inspection. Everything else follows from the tech pack.

Stating the classification will be supplied is the important part, because it reserves the club's right to define what counts as a major defect — and the club-specific checks are the ones that make the standard useful. The arithmetic is set out in AQL 1.5 versus 2.5.

What Belongs in the Artwork Field?

The format, the colour references and the revision number — not the artwork itself at enquiry stage. Stating that vector artwork with named references exists, and that it will be supplied with the tech pack, is enough to get an accurate quotation.

Where a club has only a raster file, saying so at enquiry is worth doing, because a redraw is a cost and a delay and both are better known early.

Who Should Be Named in the Enquiry?

One person, with a decision authority and a response time. A club that names a committee gets committee-speed responses, and a club that names nobody gets correspondence with whoever happens to answer.

The named person does not have to be the chair. The kit manager is usually the better choice, because the questions that come back are technical and the kit manager knows the answers.

What Should a Club Expect Back?

A unit figure, a sampling window, a bulk window, a delivery date, and the questions that remain. A quotation that contains a price and no date is not a quotation a club can plan with, and it is worth asking for the date explicitly.

The second thing to expect is a question or two. No enquiry is perfect, and a supplier that asks nothing has either understood everything or assumed everything. Two questions is a good sign.

How Does a Club Compare Two Quotations?

On the same fifteen fields, side by side. Two quotations for "500 team bags" are not comparable, because the two suppliers may have priced different assumptions about the compartments, the colourway count or the delivery term.

What Does an Incomplete Enquiry Actually Cost?

Time, mostly. Every round of questions is a week, and three rounds is three weeks — which on a spring production calendar is the difference between getting the slot and getting what is left.

The second cost is accuracy. A quotation produced from assumptions is a quotation that changes when the assumptions are corrected, and a club that has budgeted against the first number discovers the second one later.

How Does an RFQ Differ for a Reorder?

It is shorter, because most of the fifteen fields are already on file. A reorder enquiry needs the quantity, the date and a confirmation that nothing has changed — three fields rather than fifteen.

That is what the artefacts buy. Where the reference, the coupon set, the dye-lot record and the shade band exist, the reorder is a comparison and 300 pcs is open to discussion against the standard MOQ 500 pcs. Where they do not, the club is back to fifteen fields.

What Should a Club Do With the Answers It Gets?

File them with the tech pack. The correspondence around a quotation contains decisions — why a compartment was sized a particular way, why a colourway was consolidated — and those decisions are the ones a new committee will otherwise re-litigate.

One folder: the enquiry, the quotation, the tech pack, the coupon set, the dye-lot record and the inspection report. That is the programme, and it survives a change of personnel.

What Should a Club Do When It Has No Specification at All?

Send the bag it is replacing. A club that has no tech pack, no dimensions and no drawings can still produce a workable enquiry by sending the old bag, or photographs of it with a tape measure in frame, plus the kit list and the date.

That is enough to quote against, and it is a considerably better starting point than a written description of a bag the supplier has never seen. A physical reference answers most of the fifteen fields without anybody having to write them down.

How Should a Club Handle a Group Order?

Name one coordinator. Where several clubs order together to reach the figure, the correspondence multiplies unless one person collects the fields and sends them once. A group enquiry sent by four people is four enquiries.

The second point is to agree the split before the enquiry rather than after it. A group that agrees its colourway and its quantity split up front gets one quotation; a group that sorts it out afterwards gets a revision.

What Is the Shortest Useful Advice About an RFQ?

Send the date first. Everything else in the enquiry can be corrected subsequently, but a date that has already passed cannot, and it is the one field that decides whether the whole exercise was worth doing.

The second piece of advice is to send the kit list. It is the single most informative field in the whole document, it takes five minutes to write, and it does more to produce an accurate quotation than any amount of product description.

And the third is to name one person who decides. Enquiries that go to a committee come back to a committee, and the week that costs is the week that decides which production slot the club gets.

How Does the RFQ Fit the Rest of the Programme?

It is the first artefact and it sets the standard for the ones that follow. A club that writes a careful enquiry tends to write a careful tech pack, approve a careful coupon set and hold a careful record — because the discipline starts at the first document.

A club that sends one line and gets a list of questions back has already established the pattern for the whole programme, and it is a pattern of catching up.

How Should a Club Read a Quotation That Seems Too Low?

Check the assumptions before celebrating. A figure noticeably below the others usually reflects a different delivery term, a lower colourway count, a lighter material specification or excluded compliance evidence — all of which are legitimate choices that somebody has made on the club's behalf.

The useful response is not to reject it but to ask which of the fifteen fields were assumed. A supplier that assumed a lighter base fabric will say so, and the club can then decide whether that is acceptable rather than discovering it at inspection.

What Happens After the Quotation Arrives?

The club signs off a tech pack, and sampling begins — 6-10 working days, then bulk 35-50 days from written sample approval. The enquiry is where that chain starts, and a club that spends an afternoon on it saves weeks downstream.

The second thing that happens is that the club finds out whether the supplier understood the brief. A quotation that answers the fifteen fields in order has understood it. One that answers the price has not.

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