What Should You Send to Get an Accurate Bag Quote?

What Do You Need to Send Before a Quote Means Anything?

A price issued against a photograph is a guess dressed as a number, and guesses are corrected later — always in the same direction, usually after the buyer has already quoted their own customer. The correction is not caused by anybody being dishonest. It is caused by a calculation being run with three inputs where it needed nine, and by the missing six being discovered on the day materials were booked.

None of the fields below is exotic. Each one is something a buying team already knows or can establish in an afternoon, and each one is a field that will be asked for eventually in any case. Sending them at the start buys more time than anything else on a 35-50 day programme, because an enquiry that arrives complete is quoted against a real slot rather than against a generic one.

Two rows do most of the damage when they are left blank. The ship week is the one that quietly decides everything else: it is the field that backward-schedules the material call-in and the slot, and an enquiry without it will be quoted against a generic slot rather than against the week the goods are genuinely needed. The test protocol is the second, because a protocol added after the price is agreed is a change to the price, and the argument that follows it costs more than the test.

A third deserves a note because it is where otherwise good enquiries stall: quantity stated as a single total. Six hundred units in one colourway and six hundred split across two are different orders. The second carries a second dye lot, a second print setup and a second bill of materials line, and quoting it as one number means one of those costs is being absorbed somewhere and will reappear later.

What Happens Between the Enquiry and the Shipment?

Six stages, and the test of whether a stage is real is whether it ends in a document that somebody signs. A stage that ends in a sentence is a conversation, and conversations are not enforceable by anybody — not by the buyer, and not by the office that issued the price. Every row below therefore names the artefact it produces, because the artefact is what a buyer can hold a programme to.

The two rows where programmes actually stall are the two that look administrative. The specification freeze is where late artwork reopens decisions that were already closed, and the deposit is where a reserved slot turns back into a discussion about a slot. Neither is dramatic, and both cost a week — which is the same week, because the second usually follows the first.

There is one more row that buyers add themselves without noticing: the internal approval on their own side. A sample that sits on a desk for eleven days before approval is eleven days added to a window that was quoted as 35-50 from approval, and no amount of urgency afterwards recovers it. Naming who approves, and by when, before the sample ships is the most effective control on this page.

What MOQ and Sampling Windows Are You Quoting Against?

The figures below are published on every page of this site for a reason. They are the same figures that appear on the quotation, and a buyer should be able to check one against the other without a phone call. Nothing in this block is negotiated per enquiry; what is negotiated is the construction, and the construction does not move these numbers.

MOQ

500 pcs per style / colourway · 300 pcs on a repeat

Sampling

6-10 working days from a final tech pack · 12-15 for complex builds

Bulk production

35-50 days from sample approval

Inspection

AQL 2.5 · ISO 2859-1 · General Inspection Level II

Payment

T/T 30/70 — 30% deposit, 70% against shipping documents

Trade term

FOB Xiamen · CIF and DDP available

Capacity

SGS-validated partner production facility · 7 production lines · 149 machines · 200,000 pcs per month

Programmes coordinated

Since 2014 · 12+ years

Reply window

One working day · Beijing time (UTC+8)

Contact

[email protected] · WhatsApp +86 177 5002 0688

MOQ sits at 500 pcs per style and colourway because a colourway is not a label — it is a dye lot on the shell, a webbing and binding lot, a print or embroidery setup and a foam or laminate lay of its own. Two colourways of 250 are not equivalent to 500 of one, and the cost of the second colourway is the cost of a second setup rather than the cost of a second colour. On a repeat, where the setup already exists and the material lots have already been proven, 300 is workable.

Sampling is 6-10 working days from a final tech pack, and 12-15 working days for a complex build — one with a moulded cavity, a new hardware tool, or a laminate that has to be developed rather than bought. The clock starts when the pack is final, not when the enquiry arrives. An enquiry sent on Monday with the artwork still in draft has not started any clock at all, and the honest answer on Monday is to say so rather than to start counting anyway.

How Do Payment and Trade Terms Actually Work?

Payment is T/T 30/70: a 30% deposit and a 70% balance against the shipping documents. The deposit is not a formality. It is the event that turns a reserved slot into a booked one, because named fabrics, foam and hardware are ordered against it, and a mill will not hold a lot on a promise. The balance is released against the documents, which is precisely what keeps the inspection report and the packing list in the same envelope as the release.

One practical note that costs nothing and prevents the most expensive email in this industry. Bank details are confirmed by a callback to a number the buyer already holds before the first transfer, and they do not change afterwards. If a message arrives changing them, it did not come from this office, whatever the signature block says.

FOB Xiamen is the default because it leaves the buyer in control of the freight and because the seller's obligation ends somewhere a document can prove. It is not always the right answer. On lanes where the buyer's forwarder has no presence, or where destination charges are unknown and uncontrollable, CIF or DDP can be the better risk to carry even when it is the larger number on the invoice. That comparison is arithmetic rather than preference: the Incoterm decision tool runs it, and the landed cost calculator puts the eight lines behind it into one figure.

How Is the Delivery Date Calculated Rather Than Promised?

We do not promise the fastest 20 days. We promise a delivery date you can calculate, and a date that cannot be taken apart cannot be checked. The arithmetic is set out below, measured from the day the sample is approved in writing, because approval is the only starting point that both sides can evidence.

The block that surprises people is the first one. Nine to fourteen days pass before a single unit is cut, and that time is spent on named materials arriving rather than on anybody deciding anything. It is also the only block a buyer can genuinely shorten, by approving a stock material instead of a developed one. The reverse is equally true: a fabric named for the first time after approval brings its own lead time with it rather than fitting inside the window that was quoted.

The second block is the floor time, and it is what the slot actually buys. Twenty to twenty-seven days of cutting, printing and assembly is not padding; it is the time a line takes to run a marker, set print, balance stations and finish a lot at a quality that survives inspection. A quotation promising less is either quoting a different lot size or quoting a slot that does not exist.

Everything behind this — including what happens when a vessel is missed, and why a twenty-day promise is not a plan — is set out in why the window is 35 to 50 days. Read it before agreeing a date with your own customer, not after.

Which Channel Should You Use, and What Belongs Where?

Two channels, and the choice matters because only one of them is a record. Anything that will later be quoted back — a dimension, a price, a date, a change — belongs in a medium that can be searched in eleven months when the repeat order is being placed. Anything that needs an answer inside the hour belongs in the other one.

• Email [email protected] — technical packs, drawings, artwork, purchase orders, approvals and any change to a price or a date. Attachments stay searchable, and a quoted email is a record.
• WhatsApp +86 177 5002 0688 — confirmations, build photographs during production, and questions that need an answer the same hour. Fast, and not a place to settle a specification.
• Quotation documents — always by email, always with a revision date in the file name. A price sent only in a chat window is not a price anybody can be held to.
• Bank details — confirmed by callback to a number you already hold, before the first transfer. They are never changed by email.
• Urgent production questions during a running programme — WhatsApp first, then email, so the answer exists in both places.

The subject line does more work than buyers expect. Category, quantity and ship week — cooler bag, 600 pcs across two colourways, ex-factory week 34 — is enough for the enquiry to be routed to the right planner and for the reply to be written without a round of clarifying questions. A subject line reading enquiry or hello costs a day, and on a 35-50 day programme a day at the front is a day at the back.

What Mistakes Make an Enquiry Hard to Quote?

None of these will get an enquiry declined. All of them turn a one-day reply into a two-week one, and two of them move the price after the buyer has already committed to their own customer. They are listed in the order in which they are usually discovered, which is the reverse of the order in which they matter.

What all eight have in common is that they are decisions left open rather than errors made. An enquiry with an open decision in it is not a bad enquiry; it is an unfinished one, and the fastest way to finish it is to say which fields are not known yet. Do that in the first email. A stated unknown becomes a question in the reply, while an unstated one becomes a correction later, and the correction always arrives at the worst moment.

How Fast Do We Reply, and What Is in the First Reply?

One working day. Enquiries received before the end of the working day in Beijing time (UTC+8) are answered the same day; anything received after it, or across a weekend, is answered on the next working day. An enquiry that has to wait on a material price from a mill is told that it is waiting, and told which day the answer is expected — silence is not an acceptable status for a live enquiry.

The first reply contains one of two things, and it says which one it is:

• A price, with its conditions attached: the six locked parameters restated, the sampling window, the bulk window, the inspection plan that will be applied and the week the slot is available.
• Or a numbered list of the fields still open, each with the reason it changes the number, so the buyer can decide whether to answer it or to drop it.
• In both cases: the name of the person who will run the programme, and the revision date of the specification the reply was written against.
• In both cases: a note on anything in the enquiry that sits outside the six open categories, so nobody spends a week on an enquiry that cannot be quoted.

What the first reply never contains is a price without its conditions, or a date without the field that date depends on. If a number arrives with nothing attached to it, the number is not finished — and the finishing of it will happen later, at the buyer's expense rather than anybody else's.

What If Your Programme Falls Outside the Six Open Categories?

Six categories are open on this site: cooler and insulated, camera and equipment, team kit, wine and bottle, neoprene, and drawstring. Each has its own specification page, and each is quoted against the same six figures. Anything outside them — a construction that belongs to another part of the group, or a category this site has deliberately not written about — receives an honest answer on day one rather than a quote that unravels in week three.

Two answers are usual, and both take one working day. If the construction is one this programme cannot quote without research, the reply says so and stops there rather than producing a number that will be revised. If it is one that another site in the group covers properly, the reply names it, so the buyer spends the week on the right enquiry instead of on this one. A redirect on day one is worth more than a quotation on day three that cannot be honoured.

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