Custom Bag RFQ Checklist: What to Send to Get a Quote That Survives Bulk
A message lands in our inbox most mornings that reads, more or less: “Hi, please quote a canvas tote, 1,000 pcs, with our logo.” That’s it. And here’s the honest thing nobody tells you from the buyer’s side — that message doesn’t get you a fast quote. It gets you a guess. Because to put a real number on that bag, I have to decide, on your behalf, about a dozen things you didn’t mention: the canvas weight, the handle length and reinforcement, whether the base is boxed, what the lining is, how the logo goes on, and whether it ships flat or stands up on a shelf.
So this checklist isn’t really about getting a quote faster, though it will. It’s about controlling what you’re actually buying before money changes hands.
A copy-paste RFQ you can send today
Drop this into an email or a one-page brief. Fill what you know, mark the rest “TBD — please advise,” and you’ll skip most of the back-and-forth:
SUBJECT: RFQ — [bag type], [quantity] pcs, target [price/Incoterm], need by [date]
1. Bag & reference: [type] — see attached [photo/sample]; it's a ___ reference (style/fit/fabric/construction)
2. Dimensions: __ W × __ H × __ D cm (tolerance: TBD/your spec)
3. Main fabric: ___ (weight/composition, e.g. 12oz cotton canvas / 600D poly)
4. Lining / stiffener: ___
5. Hardware: zipper ___ (brand/size), pullers ___, other trims ___, finish ___
6. Construction notes: handles/straps reinforcement, edge finish, anything load-bearing
7. Branding: logo method ___, placement ___, files attached (vector + Pantone)
8. Quantity: ___ total; color/size split ___; please quote price breaks at ___/___/___
9. Samples: stage needed ___ (proto / PP on bulk materials / sealed); who pays ___
10. Packaging & docs: ___ ; reports needed ___ (e.g. SMETA)
11. Commercials: target price ___, Incoterm ___, ship-to ___, payment terms ___, deadline ___
12. Open questions for you to advise on: ___
The full pack that gets you a number you can hold to bulk
This is the part generic “RFQ checklist” articles skip, because they’re written for packaging or apparel and don’t know where bags hide their cost and their failure points. Bags fail at the handle, the zipper, the edge, and the base — so that’s where your spec has to get specific. Send what you can; flag what you don’t know as a question rather than leaving it silent.
| What to send | Why it changes the quote (and the bulk) |
|---|---|
| Reference type, stated — is your sample/photo a style, fit/size, fabric, or construction reference? | Stops the factory copying the wrong thing. A bag can match the photo’s look and miss its build entirely. |
| Tech pack, if you have one (what that includes) | A real tech pack removes nearly all guessing. No tech pack is fine for a ballpark; for a lockable quote it’s the difference between a price and a promise. |
| Dimensions + tolerances | “Looks like the sample” is not a spec. ±3–5 mm on a tote vs ±5–8 mm on a backpack is a spec, and it’s what you’ll measure bulk against. |
| Fabric: weight + composition (how GSM and denier actually read) | 600D vs 900D polyester, 10 oz vs 16 oz canvas — same word, different bag, different price, different lifespan. |
| Lining + any interlining/board | The reason a sample “stands up” and bulk “slumps” is usually a stiffener the cheap quote quietly dropped. Name it. |
| Hardware: brand, size, finish (choosing trims that survive bulk) | “A zipper” vs “YKK #5 coil, antique-brass pull” is a real cost line and a real durability line. Same for D-rings, feet, magnets, plating. |
| Stress-point construction | Bartack count, stitches-per-inch, reinforcement at handles and strap anchors, edge paint vs folded-and-stitched edges. This is where returns are born three weeks after your customer buys. |
| Branding method + placement (print, embroidery, woven label options) | Screen vs embroidery vs heat-transfer vs woven label changes minimum order, unit cost, and which fabrics it’ll even sit on. Send a vector logo + Pantone, not a screenshot. |
| Quantity tiers (how MOQ and lead time work) | Ask for price breaks at, say, 500 / 1,000 / 3,000. The per-unit math often makes your decision for you. Ask the MOQ rather than assuming it. |
| Sample stage + who pays | Be explicit: development proto, pre-production (PP) sample on bulk materials, or a sealed golden sample. These are different costs and different timelines, and quoting them blind is how development paths diverge. |
| Packaging + compliance | Polybag, hangtag, care label, barcode, master carton config — and any audit or test reports you’ll need (e.g. SMETA). Adding these late re-prices the job. |
| Commercials — target price, Incoterm (FOB/CIF/DDP), ship-to, payment terms, hard deadline (what really drives landed cost) | Two quotes are only comparable if they’re on the same Incoterm. A cheap unit price with ugly freight is not cheap. |
You won’t have every cell filled on day one. That’s fine. The point is to make your assumptions visible — write “lining: TBD, please recommend” instead of saying nothing, so the factory answers it on the record instead of resolving it silently in the workshop.
The 5 fields that get you a ballpark in a day
If you just need to know whether a project is roughly $4 or roughly $12 a unit before you invest more time, you don’t need the full pack. You need these five, and you need to be honest that what comes back is a ballpark, not a number anyone can be held to:
- Bag type + one reference image. A photo of a similar bag (yours or someone else’s) tells a factory more in two seconds than a paragraph does. Say what it is a reference for — the shape, the fabric, or the construction.
- Rough finished dimensions — width × height × depth in cm. Even approximate. Size drives material consumption, which drives most of the cost.
- Main fabric, with a weight if you have one. “Canvas” is a ballpark input; “12 oz cotton canvas” is a real one.
- Quantity, with the color/size split. 3,000 units in one color is a different price from 3,000 across eight colors. Both numbers matter.
- Target price, ship-to country, and deadline. Yes, the target price. More on why below.
Send that and a decent factory can give you a directional number within a day. What it can’t do is promise that number survives sa
Why a vague RFQ gets you a worse price, not a better one
A thin RFQ doesn’t find you a cheaper bag — it filters out the suppliers who’d quote it honestly. Here’s the mechanism, from the factory bench.
When the spec is incomplete, every factory you’ve contacted faces the same choice: ask you a stack of questions (accurate, but slow, and you might lose patience and ghost them), or assume the gaps and quote anyway (fast, but the number is fiction). The factories that care about not getting into a dispute later will assume conservatively and price in a cushion — so their quote comes back higher. The factories that just want to win the PO will assume cheaply, quote low, and plan to make up the difference in substitutions once you’ve paid. Same vague email, two very different numbers, and the cheap one is cheap precisely because it’s the one most likely to burn you.
That’s the trap most buyers walk into. A suspiciously low quote is often not a better price — it’s a sign you under-specified, and a corner-cutter filled the silence. The fix isn’t to negotiate harder. It’s to remove the silence.
Why you should give your target price (most buyers get this backwards)
Buyers are coached to hide their budget so the supplier “can’t price up to it.” From the factory side, that advice quietly costs you the better bag.
A target price isn’t you showing your hand. It’s an instruction. Tell me you need to land a structured nylon backpack at $9 FOB and I can engineer toward that — swap a premium lining for one that reads the same at arm’s length, suggest a fabric weight that holds up without gold-plating the cost, tell you honestly which features have to give. Hide the number, and I’m guessing. I either guess high and price you out of working with me, or I guess at what I think you’ll accept and start quietly cutting to hit a number you never told me. Neither helps you.
The factories that abuse a target price by padding to it are the ones that would have cut corners anyway. The ones worth keeping use it the way a builder uses a budget — as the constraint that makes the design real.
Your RFQ is a quality document, not a pricing formality
The single most expensive failure in custom bags — the sample that looked perfect but the bulk that didn’t — almost always starts in the RFQ, weeks before anyone sews anything.
Think about it this way. The gaps you leave in your quote request don’t disappear. They get carried, unspoken, all the way into production, where they finally get resolved — by a line worker, a purchasing clerk substituting “an equivalent” zipper, a foreman bumping the stitch density to tidy things up. None of those people were in your design conversation. They’re just resolving an ambiguity you left open, and on a 5,000-piece run they resolve it in whatever direction is fastest and cheapest. By the time you cut open the carton, the “drift” you’re furious about was actually baked in at the quote stage. You didn’t specify it, so the factory specified it for you.
A complete RFQ closes those forks while you still have leverage — before the deposit, while the factory still wants to win you. That’s why I tell brands to treat the RFQ as the first line of quality control, not a price-shopping chore.
a good factory actually does with a complete RFQ
Here’s the part you can’t put in a template — what should happen on the other end when your RFQ lands complete.
A factory worth choosing doesn’t just price it back. It reads your spec for trouble and tells you before you pay. When your construction notes describe a strap anchor that’ll pull out at the weight you’re loading, or a fabric/finish combination that’ll crack at the edges, the time to hear that is at the quote stage — not after the deposit, and definitely not after bulk. On our side that pre-production read is a standard step, because the same in-house team that quotes your bag also builds the sample and writes the production instructions the line follows, under our own production control. There’s no outsourced pattern house in the middle to lose your intent in translation.
That’s also why a complete RFQ comes back fast. Send us a full pack and you’ll usually have a real, line-buildable number — and any risk flags — inside a day. Send three lines and we’re emailing you questions for a week, same as anyone. (If you want the wider picture of how all of this fits together, our full custom bag manufacturing guide walks the whole path from brief to shipment.)
FAQ
What’s the difference between an RFQ and a tech pack?
An RFQ (request for quotation) is the package of information you send a factory to get a price; a tech pack is the technical specification of the bag itself — measurements, materials, construction, trims. A tech pack is the strongest single attachment inside an RFQ, but the RFQ also carries the commercial stuff a tech pack doesn’t: quantity, target price, Incoterm, deadline.
Do I need a tech pack to get a quote?
No. For a directional ballpark, a reference image, rough dimensions, fabric, quantity, and target price are enough. You only need a full tech pack when you want a quote precise enough to hold the factory to in bulk. The more you specify, the less the factory has to assume — and assumptions are where price and quality both drift.
Should I really tell the factory my target price?
Yes, if you want the factory to engineer toward your number instead of guessing. A target price lets a good supplier suggest the material and construction route that hits your budget honestly. Hiding it usually gets you either an inflated quote or one that’s quietly cutting corners to reach a number you never stated.
Why did two factories quote wildly different prices for “the same” bag?
Usually because they filled your spec’s blanks differently — one assumed a heavier fabric, a branded zipper, and reinforced handles; the other assumed the cheapest version of each. The gap is often invisible in the quote and very visible in the bulk. What actually drives a bag’s cost breaks down where those differences hide.
What’s the absolute minimum I can send for a quick ballpark?
Bag type with a reference photo, approximate dimensions, main fabric, quantity with color split, and your target price and ship-to country. That’s enough for a directional number within a day — just don’t treat a ballpark as a quotable, lockable price.
How long should an accurate quote take?
With a complete RFQ, often within a working day. With a thin one, expect several days of back-and-forth while the factory asks the questions you didn’t answer. The time you “save” by sending less, you pay back with interest in clarification emails.
