How Do You Specify a Drawstring Bag That Does Not Fail at the Eyelet?

What Fabric Weight Does a Drawstring Bag Need, and What Will It Carry?

The first number in a drawstring specification is the weight of the fabric, and it is the number most often replaced by a name. "Polyester" on a tech pack covers 55 gsm and 250 gsm, and those two are not the same product and do not carry the same load. Mass per unit area is measured to ISO 3801, and the figure belongs on the pack in grams per square metre with a tolerance, because a fabric can be supplied at the low end of its own nominal range and still be sold under the same name.

Weight is two decisions in one, and they are not the same decision. It sets what the bag costs and it sets what the bag carries, and the second follows from the construction of the fabric as much as from its mass. A 110 gsm ripstop and a 110 gsm plain weave are the same weight and not the same fabric: the ripstop has a grid of heavier threads running through it, and a tear that starts stops when it reaches the grid. That is the entire reason the ripstop row carries more than the rows beside it at the same weight, and it is why a heavier fabric is not automatically a stronger one.

And the load in that table is a load in the bag, not a load on a handle, because a drawstring bag has no handles. Its load path runs through the hem, through the seam that joins the hem to the body and through the two cords. The fabric is almost never the part that fails. Specifying a heavier fabric to raise the capacity is usually buying weight rather than strength, and it is paid for twice — once in the material and once in the freight.

Two things at the light end of the range are worth knowing before it is chosen. Below about 80 gsm a printed logo will read through from the opposite face, which is a visible problem on the outside of a bag that was printed on one side only. And non-woven polypropylene is a bonded fibre mat rather than a woven structure: it has no tear resistance to speak of, so a snag becomes a hole, and it is among the more UV-sensitive of the common polymers, so a bag left in the sun becomes brittle. It sits at the bottom of the cost index for a reason, and the reason is that it is a single-occasion material.

The padded end of the range is a different product with a different specification, and it is specified as one on the camera page. A drawstring with a padded body is a padded article that closes with a cord, and the padding — its density, its thickness and what it is carried on — becomes the specification rather than the weight of the shell.

Where Does a Drawstring Bag Fail, and Why Is It Not the Fabric?

It fails at the top, and it fails in the same order almost every time: the seam that joins the hem to the body, then the eyelet, then the cord. The fabric is a distant fourth. That ordering is the whole of the engineering on this SKU, and it is worth stating before the material is chosen, because most of the money spent on a drawstring bag is spent on the part that does not fail.

The hem is a folded tube with a cord running through it. When the bag is lifted, the load in it is carried by the cord, the cord pulls on the hem, and the hem pulls on the single straight seam that joins it to the body. That seam is unreinforced and it is closed with one row of stitch, and it is the part that opens. The failure is a peel: the seam separates outward from the hem, and it shows first at the two ends, next to the eyelets, which is where the load concentrates because that is where the cord bears.

The control is in the hem and it is two things. The seam should be double-turned — two folds and two rows of stitch — rather than a single turn closed with one row, because the second fold puts a double thickness of fabric under the stitch and the second row shares the load. And it should be bar-tacked at both ends, at the two points where the cord exits. A bar-tack is four stitches and it is the difference between a bag that holds and a bag that opens at the corner.

Then the cord, which is the part that is specified last and chosen first. Its diameter sets the eyelet, its material sets the hand and its knot sets whether the bag stays closed. A 5 mm braided cord will not pass twice through a 4 mm eyelet, and a knot that will pass the eyelet will not hold the bag shut — the two requirements pull against each other and the eyelet is the thing that has to be sized for both.

The test is a short one and it is the only one that matters on this SKU. Fill the bag to the load it was specified for, lift it by the two cords and hold it for a stated time; then set it down and repeat. The requirement is no opening of the hem seam and no movement of the eyelet. It takes a minute, it needs no apparatus, and it will separate a good bag from a bad one faster than an inspection will.

Metal Grommet or a Worked Eyelet: Which One Holds the Cord?

The eyelet is specified as a hole and it has to be specified as a construction. A hole cut in a folded hem with nothing behind it is a hole the cord will pull through, and it will pull through at the moment the bag is lifted with something in it — which is to say, the first time it is used.

The reinforcement behind the eyelet is the specification, and it is the one that is left out because it is inside the hem and nobody sees it. A patch — a second layer of the shell, a tape, or a short length of webbing — folded into the hem at each eyelet position is what the eyelet bears on. An eyelet without a patch is an eyelet bearing on two plies of whatever the hem happens to be made of.

The metal grommet is the strongest of the four and it carries two questions with it. The washer is the part that makes it work: without it, the ring bears on two plies and the ring is the thing that pulls through them. With it, the load is spread across the reinforcement and the grommet is doing the job it was bought for. And the metal itself: a brass or a steel grommet in a bag that meets salt water or a wet floor will mark the fabric around it, and a nickel-plated one raises a restricted-substances question. REACH restricts nickel release from articles in prolonged contact with the skin, and that question attaches to a toggle and a cord end exactly as it does to a grommet.

The worked eyelet has no metal in it, so it has none of those questions, and it is the one to ask for on three occasions: a bag that will be laundered, a children’s article, or a market where the buyer would rather not carry the substance question at all. It is not as strong as a grommet on a washer and it costs less to make, and on a bag carrying 3 kg it is entirely adequate.

And the stitched-through hole is the one to refuse outright. It is a hole cut in the hem and stitched around its edge, and the stitch tears out along the perimeter of the hole. It appears in a drawing as a circle and it behaves like a perforation.

On a children’s article there is a further requirement and it is the destination’s, not ours. A cord on a garment intended for children is covered by a published specification for cords and drawstrings on children’s clothing, and some buyers apply the same approach to a bag that is worn: a fixed cord length and a breakaway or a fixed loop. In the United States the children’s-product requirements on a metal component and on a print sit under CPSIA. Ask which of them applies before the cord is designed, because a cord length cannot be changed after the hem is cut.

How Much of a Drawstring Bag Can You Actually Print On?

A drawstring bag has no flat surface. It is a tube that collapses, and that one fact sets every limit on the print. Every other constraint below follows from it, and all of them are discoverable at the artwork stage and expensive at the sampling stage.

The platen is the first limit. To print on a soft bag, a board goes inside it to hold the face flat, and the printable area is the board minus the seam allowance. A print that reaches the edge of the panel is a print that falls on the fold, and it will not register there — the bag moves under the screen and the image lands twice, or not at all.

The eyelet line is the second and it is the one artwork ignores. The hem is a fold, and when the bag is closed the hem gathers. Anything printed above the eyelet line disappears into the gather, so the top of the usable area is the bottom of the hem, and the bottom of it is where the platen stops. A design drawn to the full height of the bag has drawn a third of itself into a place where it will never be seen.

The reinforcement behind the eyelet is an obstacle in the same way. A print placed over the patch sits on a raised area, and the ink goes down unevenly on it. Keep the artwork below the eyelet line and outside the two eyelet positions, and the print lands on the one part of the bag that is genuinely flat when it is held.

Then the colour count, and on this SKU it is an economic limit before it is a technical one. Each colour is a screen and a pass, and at a unit price of USD 0.30-0.85 the second and third colour are a visible share of the price. Two colours is the practical working limit; a photographic image belongs on a sublimated panel printed flat before assembly, which is the method set out on the neoprene page for a stretchy face and it works the same way here.

And two things specific to the light fabrics. On a non-woven the ink sinks into a fibre mat, so the definition is poor and the colour reads duller than the same ink on a woven face: a non-woven bag is drawn for one colour with wide strokes, and it is not the place for a fine line. And on a soft bag a two-colour print without a jig will be out of register, because the bag moves on the platen between passes. The jig is a tooling item, it is paid once, and it is the difference between a print that registers and one that does not.

Why Is the MOQ Higher on a Drawstring Bag Than on Any Other Bag?

Because the unit is worth so little. At a unit price of USD 0.30-0.85, the fixed costs of an order — the print setup, the cutting die, the inspection, the folding, the packing and the documentation — are a large share of the invoice, and they are the same absolute costs whether the order is 500 pieces or 5,000. That is the whole of it, and it is worth saying plainly, because a buyer who has been quoted 1,000 elsewhere and 500 here is entitled to know which of the two numbers is the real one.

So our answer, and it is a specific one. MOQ is 500 pcs per style and per colourway, and 300 can be discussed on a repeat, and we will make a 500-piece order. Two conditions attach to it and one consequence follows. The conditions: one configuration, because 500 spread across three sizes and two prints is three setups and two screens and it does not price like 500 of one; and a fabric that is available, because a custom-woven ripstop or a custom-dyed canvas carries a mill minimum of its own that is larger than 500 bags. The consequence: at 500 the unit sits at the top of the band, and at 5,000 it sits at the bottom. The difference is the fixed costs spreading, not the material.

And the reason we take it, because that is the part worth understanding before you order. This is the long tail of the category. A commodity line is set up to make one bag in ten thousand, and it will not take a 500-piece order in a specified fabric with a specified eyelet and a printed panel that has to register — the line is not built to change over for it, and the order is not worth the changeover. The order we are built for is the particular one: a specific size, a specific weight, a specific eyelet, in a quantity that is too small for a commodity line and too particular for a stock catalogue. That is the trade. The honest half of it is that you pay for it at the top of the band, and that the quantity is the single lever that moves the price furthest.

And if the quantity cannot move at all, consolidate instead. One fabric across three sizes in a single 500-unit order is one setup and one print; three fabrics in the same order are three. That is the same arithmetic the team kit page uses to get a squad order under the same MOQ, and it transfers directly.

Which Parameters Drift Between the Approved Sample and the Second Run?

The drift on this SKU is a drift towards a lighter and simpler construction, because that is where the money is, and every item below has arrived on a second run. Each one becomes a single line on the tech pack with a figure in it.

• The fabric weight. A 210D at 110 gsm for one at 130 gsm, or a 190T taffeta for a 210D: the two are sold under the same description and one of them carries half the load.
• The eyelet construction. A grommet supplied without the washer that was approved, or a stitched hole where a worked eyelet was specified.
• The reinforcement behind the eyelet, which is the drift nobody sees because it is folded inside the hem.
• The hem seam. A single turn for a double turn, one row of stitch for two, and no bar-tack at the two ends.
• The cord. A braid of a different diameter, a flat cord for a round one, or a knot that passes the eyelet instead of holding it.
• The print, in size and in position. Ten millimetres higher and it crosses the eyelet line, and it is approved either way because the approved sample has it too.

The reasoning behind the tolerance sheet is in keeping a repeat order within tolerance; the short version for this SKU is that a bag cannot be the same as the sample unless the sample has been cut open. One coupon from the hem, one recorded weight, and a drawing with the eyelet line on it is the whole control, and it fits on a single page of the pack.

And the pre-production sample on this SKU should be a loaded one. Four or five bags off the bulk fabric, filled to the load in the table, lifted by the cords and held. A bag approved empty has approved a print and nothing else.

What Are You Really Buying When the Purchase Order Says AQL 2.5?

Those four words appear on quotations for this SKU more often than for any other, and they are a setting on a sampling plan rather than a statement about quality. ISO 2859-1 exists to answer one question about a lot — take it or leave it — and it answers by drawing a fixed number of pieces and counting. It does not say the bag is good, and it says nothing whatsoever about the ones it did not open.

At General Inspection Level II with AQL 2.5, a lot of 1,201 to 3,200 pieces draws 125 units, and the rule is 7 and 8: accepted with 7 or fewer major defects, rejected at 8. The standard, the level, the AQL and the lot band belong on the purchase order together. A quotation carrying the third of them alone has committed to nothing, because the sample size is set by the other three.

The last column is the one to read before signing. Two thousand bags get 6.3% of the pieces looked at and twenty thousand get 1.6%. That is what the system is for and it is not a fault in it — the job is accepting and rejecting lots. But there are two failures on this SKU that a count will never find, and they are the two that matter most: a fabric lighter than the one specified, and an eyelet with no reinforcement behind it. Neither is visible in a counted bag. What finds them is a destructive test on a stated number of pieces per lot — a hem seam pull and a section cut through the eyelet — sitting alongside the count and paid for separately from it.

The three classes are where the instruction is won or lost and they are usually left blank. Critical, zero-tolerance at any AQL: a hem seam that opens under the specified load, or a metal component that fails a restricted-substances requirement. Major: a bag that comes back — a single-turned hem where a double-turned one was specified, an eyelet without the reinforcement, a print that sits across the eyelet line. Minor: a logo 3 mm out of position, a thread end that is not on a load path. AQL 2.5 governs the majors; minors normally carry their own, tighter figure. Write an example of each from this bag into the instruction, because an inspector who has to classify by judgement will classify differently on the next visit.

Someone will offer AQL 1.5 and present it as a stricter setting. What it does is lower the accept number, so a lot with seven majors passes at 2.5 and fails at 1.5. But 1.5 is not among the AQLs normally used with ISO 2859-1 and its ANSI counterpart, and the effect is not that fewer defects leave the building — the goods are identical either way. It is that more conforming lots are rejected and reworked on someone’s account. The arithmetic is set out in AQL 1.5 vs 2.5.

How Long Does a Drawstring Programme Take From Tech Pack to Port?

MOQ is 500 pcs per style and per colourway, and 300 can be discussed on a repeat. The constraint here is the setup rather than the sewing: a print setup, a cutting die and an eyelet setting are paid once and spread across the run, and at this unit value they are spread across a small number. Two colourways at 250 each is two setups and two dyelots, and it is a more expensive order than 500 of one.

MOQ

500 pcs per style / colourway (300 on repeat)

Sampling

6-10 working days (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

Incoterm

FOB Xiamen (CIF / DDP available)

Capacity reference

7 production lines, 149 machines, 200,000 pcs per month

Operating since

2014

Bulk is 35-50 days from sample approval, and the spread is a queue rather than padding. It holds the material, because a specified fabric in a specified colour is made to order and is not sitting on a shelf; the position in the cutting and sewing queue behind whatever was booked before; and the inspection, folding and packing window at the end, which on this SKU is a larger share of the time than it is on any other bag on this site. We do not promise the fastest 20 days. We promise a delivery date you can calculate, and the calculation is set out in why bulk takes 35-50 days.

Sampling is 6-10 working days, and the clock starts when the fabric is in hand rather than when the drawing is finished. A drawstring sample cannot be made from a stock fabric if the specification is 130 gsm in a colour that has to match a print: the fabric is dyed first. Settle the weight and the colour before the 6-10 working days and they are spent on the bag; settle them afterwards and they are spent twice.

Then the date. Subtract customs entry and inland delivery, subtract transit, subtract the 35-50 days, subtract the 6-10 working days and your own approval time — and add the dyelot, because on a printed bag in a specified colour that is the item that decides whether the season is met.

Where Does the Money Go When the Unit Price Is Under a Dollar?

At this unit value the answer is different from every other bag on this site, and it is worth knowing before the first quotation is read. The material is not the largest share of the price at 500 pieces, and it is not even close.

• The fabric, and it is the largest line at every quantity, but at 500 it is a third of the price rather than half of it.
• The hem, and it is three operations: a fold, a row of stitch and a second row. A single-turned hem is two operations and it is the one that opens.
• The eyelet, by the construction. A worked eyelet is an operation on a reinforced hem; a grommet on a washer is a hole, two metal components and a setting.
• The cord, by the metre and by the material. A braided polyester cord and a cotton cord are not the same price and they are not the same hand, and the two are frequently substituted for each other.
• The print, by the colour count, and each colour is a screen and a pass on a soft bag that moves.
• The cutting. This SKU is cut on a die in volume, and the die is paid once; a nested layout for a small run is paid every time and it carries the waste.
• The packing, and on this SKU it is the surprise. At a unit price of USD 0.30-0.85, folding, bagging and cartoning are operations performed on a very low-value article, and they are a visible share of what the buyer pays.

Freight is the lever that is always available on this SKU and nearly always left alone, and it is a large one in both directions. A drawstring bag nests flat and it is the one product in this category that can be packed at its nested size with no loss of protection, so a carton specified to the nested rather than the flat size moves the landed figure further than a point off the unit price. And it cuts the other way too: at this unit value the freight per piece is a bigger share of the landed cost than on any other bag here, which is why two 500-piece orders shipped together cost materially less to land than the same two shipped a fortnight apart.

Tooling and testing behave the same way here as everywhere and they should be asked for as separate lines. A cutting die, a screen per colour, an eyelet setting die and a printing jig are paid once, on the first invoice, and not again; a hem pull, a section through the eyelet and a restricted-substances screen on a metal component behave the same way. A quotation that has absorbed them into the unit price is a number that will not survive a reorder at a different quantity, and the reorder is where that becomes visible.

The landed cost calculator exists because the unit price is one line of eight, and on this SKU it is a smaller line than it looks. Eight lines add up to the number that matters: unit price, haulage to the port, origin charges, freight on the greater of weight and cube, insurance, destination handling, duty at the confirmed rate, and final delivery. The two the calculator was built for are the two nobody quotes — destination handling and duty — and at USD 0.30 a piece they are the lines that decide the answer.

Which Five Design Mistakes Bring Drawstring Bags Back?

All five are present in the sample that gets approved, and that is what makes them expensive. An inspector working to the approved sample will pass all five without any difficulty at all, because the sample has them too. The drawing review against the tech pack is the only control that catches any of them, and it has to happen before the 6-10 working days are spent rather than after they are gone.

A sixth that is not a design error and produces the same result: the load that was never stated. A bag supplied for a laundry load and used for a laundry load is a different bag from one supplied for a pair of shoes, and if the load was never written down then neither was the hem.

What Does a Drawstring Bag Cost to Land, and Which Tariff Line Does It Enter On?

A drawstring bag of textile normally enters in heading 4202, and the subheading follows the outer surface: a man-made textile outer surface usually falls in 4202.92. A bag made of non-woven polypropylene raises its own question, because a non-woven is not a woven fabric, and where an article of non-woven falls is settled by how the destination tariff treats it. That is a broker question, and it is worth asking before the order rather than after it — an error found at the border is not settled in a conversation, it is corrected afterwards as a post-entry amendment.

And at this unit value the duty and the freight are a larger share of the landed cost than on any other bag on this site. A duty rate that is a rounding error on a USD 4.80 article is a material line on a USD 0.30 one, and a percentage that was worth confirming once is worth confirming here. Rates are those of the destination tariff and they move, so a rate in an email is an estimate — confirm it against the official tariff or through a licensed broker before the programme is priced. The HS code finder will settle the line, and the Incoterm decision tool will say whether FOB Xiamen allocates the risk the way you want on that lane. FOB Xiamen is how the work is quoted and how most orders move; it is not right on every lane, and on some of them the buyer is paying a freight margin for the sake of not taking a call.

Two things then decide the number, and both are decided after the price is agreed. The carton: a drawstring nests flat, and a carton specified to the nested size instead of the flat one changes the freight line more than the unit price ever will. And the consolidation: at USD 0.30 a piece, two orders on one booking and one customs entry share their fixed costs, and the same two orders shipped separately pay them twice. There is a calculator built for it, and the two lines it was built for — destination handling and duty — are the two that decide the answer on this SKU.

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