How to Write a Bag RFQ That Gets Accurate Pricing

Most disputes about price accuracy are not disputes about honesty. They are disputes about which assumption was in force. The buyer assumed a coated shell; the quotation assumed a stock one. The buyer assumed a branded puller; the quotation assumed a plain one. Both parties are right about their own number and neither can see the other's.

The fix is mechanical and it costs fifteen minutes. Write down what you assume, ask the other side to write down what they assumed, and put the two lists side by side. Any line that differs is a line that will move the price, and it is far better to find it before the order.

Why Do Accurate and Low Pull in Different Directions?

Because a low price is easier to produce than an accurate one. An estimate built on stock materials, minimal hardware and an optimistic labour figure will always be lower than one built on the specification, and it will look better on a spreadsheet for exactly as long as it takes to build the first sample.

The buyer's interest is the accurate number even when it is higher, because the accurate number is the one that survives contact with production. A price that moves by 15% after sampling is worse than a price that was 10% higher from the start, because the move happens at the point where the buyer has already quoted their customer.

What Are the Nine Inputs a Bag Price Depends On?

Quantity and its split, materials, hardware, construction and labour, artwork and decoration, testing and compliance, packing, the Incoterm, and the date. Nine inputs, and a price is a function of all of them. Most RFQs state three well, three approximately and three not at all.

The three that are usually absent are testing, packing and the date. Testing because buyers treat it as a quality matter rather than a cost; packing because it is invisible on a sample; and the date because it is commercial rather than technical. Each of the three moves the number, and each of the three is easy to state.

How Do You State an Assumption You Are Not Sure Of?

As a range with a default. "Assume 600D polyester unless a lighter shell gets the target" tells the other side what to cost and gives them permission to suggest. "Fabric" tells them nothing and invites the lowest-cost reading.

The same technique works for hardware and for testing. "Assume a stock black acetal buckle at 180 N; quote a branded version separately" produces two numbers and a decision. It also produces a more accurate primary number, because the primary assumption is now explicit.

What Should You Ask to Come Back With the Number?

Nine items matching the nine inputs, plus the sampling schedule, the bulk window and the validity of the price. A quotation without a validity date is a quotation that will be honoured reluctantly months later, because material costs and exchange rates have moved in the meantime.

The validity question is worth asking explicitly. A price valid for thirty days is normal in this trade, and a buyer who asks gets a date rather than an argument. Where the programme will not order for three months, say so on the RFQ and ask what would make the price hold longer.

How Do You Reconcile the Two Lists?

Line by line, and resolve each difference before accepting anything. A difference on materials is usually a misread; a difference on hardware is usually an unspecified performance figure; a difference on testing or packing is usually an omission that the other side filled with nothing.

Record the resolution. Where the buyer accepts the quoted assumption, the pack is updated to match it, because otherwise the sample is built to one specification and inspected against another. That single step — updating the pack to the accepted assumptions — prevents most of what goes wrong between quotation and delivery.

What Does a Price Validity Clause Actually Protect?

The buyer, mostly. Material costs move, exchange rates move and freight moves, and a quotation is a snapshot of all three on the day it was issued. A validity period says how long that snapshot is offered for, and a buyer who accepts outside it is asking for a number that has already expired.

Where a programme genuinely cannot order inside thirty days, the honest move is to say so on the RFQ and ask what would hold the price longer — usually a material commitment, or a price stated against a named material index rather than a fixed figure.

How Does a Two-Quantity Request Improve Accuracy?

By making the price break visible. Asking for the number at 500 pieces and at 2,000 pieces costs the other side one extra line and tells the buyer exactly how much scale is worth on this style. That is the information a buyer needs before deciding whether to consolidate colourways or commit to a larger first run.

It also protects against a specific error. Where a buyer expects to grow and prices only at 500, the first re-order arrives with an expectation set by the small run and a quotation reflecting a different tier. Pricing both up front makes the growth path explicit.

What Role Does the Date Play in Accuracy?

A larger one than buyers expect, because the date determines what can be bought. Inside a comfortable window, a shell can be dyed to match and hardware can be plated. Inside a tight one, the choice narrows to what is in stock, and the price reflects a different set of materials.

Stating the date therefore changes the number twice: once through the materials that are available, and once through whether production has to be scheduled around other work. A buyer who states the date gets the price that applies to it rather than the price that applies to a comfortable one.

How Do You Test Whether a Number Is Accurate Before Accepting It?

Pick the largest cost line and check it by hand. On most bags that is the shell: take the consumption from the pack, multiply by the material price, and see whether it lands near the figure implied by the quotation. It will not match exactly, because of allowance and waste, but it should be in the same neighbourhood.

Where it is not, either the consumption figure or the material price is different from the one the buyer assumed, and both are worth knowing before the order. This check takes ten minutes and it is the only independent test of a quotation that a buyer can run without a second supplier, which is why it is worth running even when the number looks acceptable as it stands.

How Does This End in a Number That Holds?

With the assumptions agreed in writing, the pack updated to match them, and the quotation accepted against that pack. Sampling then runs 6-10 working days, bulk runs 35-50 days from written sample approval, and inspection runs at AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1 with shipment FOB Xiamen.

The number holds because everything it rests on is written down on both sides and the two versions agree. That is the whole of price accuracy: not a better estimate, but an agreed set of assumptions. Build the rest of the unit cost in the landed cost calculator.

Where a programme runs the same discipline on every style, something useful accumulates. The RFQs, the packs and the accepted quotations together become a record of what each input has cost over time, and that record is what lets a buyer spot a component price moving before it shows up in a quotation. It also makes the next negotiation shorter, because both sides start from the same written history rather than from two memories of it.

How Does the RFQ Handle a Programme That Will Grow?

By pricing the path rather than the step. A buyer who expects to move from 500 pieces to 2,000 within a year should say so on the RFQ and ask for the number at both, because it changes what the first run is specified around. A component with a dye-lot minimum that is wasteful at 500 is reasonable at 2,000.

A buyer who prices the path also learns something about their own programme. Where the second tier is only marginally better than the first, the constraint is usually a component with a fixed minimum rather than a labour or overhead effect, and that component is the one worth re-specifying rather than the whole bag.

It also changes what is worth tooling. A branded metal puller carries a tooling charge that is hard to justify on one run of 500 and easy to justify across four. Knowing the path lets that decision be made on the programme rather than on the order.

A fourth habit follows from the other three and is worth stating separately: ask what the price would be if the programme ordered the same style again in twelve months. The answer is usually the same number with a caveat about material cost, and the caveat is the information the buyer actually wants.

Where the answer is not the same number, the cause is worth understanding before the order rather than after it. A style that cannot be repeated at the same price is usually one that depended on a one-off material buy, and that dependency is visible on the BOM long before it is visible on a quotation.

What Is the One Thing to Add to Every Future RFQ?

Where the buyer already has a pack, the same line still helps, because a pack can be read two ways and the assumptions statement removes the second reading. It is useful insurance on a document that has already taken a day to write.

A single line at the top: "please return this RFQ with your assumptions listed against each of the following nine inputs". That is the entire mechanism. It costs one sentence and it converts every future quotation from a number into a checkable argument.

Buyers who adopt it report the same thing: the first quotation comes back slightly higher and every quotation after that comes back accurate. The higher first number is the one that was true all along, and finding it at quotation stage rather than at sample stage is worth more than the difference.

The mechanism is worth understanding, because it is not really about the other side being more careful. It is about the buyer stating a position. An RFQ that names nine inputs reads as one written by somebody who will check the answer, and answers to it are prepared accordingly. An RFQ that names three reads as one written by somebody who will not.

That is an uncomfortable observation and a useful one. Price accuracy is usually discussed as something the buyer extracts from a supplier, and most of it is something the buyer puts into the request before it goes out.

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