Custom Bag RFQ Template: The 30 Fields Every Creator Should Send

Why an RFQ Is a Decision Document, Not a Form

Most creators send a short message with a picture and a quantity and expect a price. What they receive is a range with caveats, and the caveats are not evasion, they are arithmetic. A bag's unit price is the sum of a material cost, a cutting and sewing time, a decoration cost, a packing cost and an amortised setup, and four of those five cannot be estimated without information that a short message does not contain. The range exists because the brief is incomplete, not because anyone is being cautious.

The cost of an incomplete brief is not the range itself, it is the calendar. An incomplete brief generates a round of clarification questions, each of which costs a day across a time difference, and three rounds of questions is a week before the clock on 6 to 10 working days of sampling has even started. A complete brief removes the questions, and that is the single largest schedule saving available to a creator at the start of a programme.

The second reason to treat the RFQ as a decision document is that it becomes the specification. The fields you fill in are the fields that will later appear on the tech pack, on the purchase order, on the packing specification and on the inspection checklist. Writing them once, carefully, at the quotation stage means they are agreed once. Writing them loosely means they get rewritten under pressure later, and a specification changed during production is the most expensive kind of change there is.

Our Bag Production Partner for Campaign Creators page describes where this document sits in the wider programme, and the custom bag order process page shows what happens immediately after it is received. This guide is the field-by-field detail of the document itself, and it is written so that you can copy the structure into a file and fill it in.

Group A: Campaign and Commercial Fields (1-6)

The first block is not about the bag at all, and it is the block creators skip most often. It establishes the commercial frame: when the money arrives, when the goods have to be delivered, how many there are and what the budget is. Without it, a production partner can quote a price but cannot tell you whether the programme is viable, and viability is the question you actually need answered.

Field 2 is the one that does the most work and it is worth being precise about. Give the month the goods must be in the destination warehouse, not the month you would like to dispatch, because the difference between those two numbers is freight, clearance and last-mile delivery, and it can be three weeks. From that month, the schedule is arithmetic: bulk runs 35 to 50 days, inspection to AQL 2.5 to ISO 2859-1 adds two to four days, and the pledge data has to be locked before the order is placed.

Field 4 deserves a sentence of its own because it is where most campaigns discover a problem. The minimum is 500 pcs per style and per colourway, so a campaign that wants three colourways needs 1,500 units, and a campaign that wants one colourway at 600 units has one colourway. If you do not know the split yet, say the total and the maximum number of colourways you would accept, and ask for a price at each. That is a legitimate way to send an RFQ, and it is much better than guessing.

Field 5 is the one creators are most reluctant to fill in, on the theory that naming a budget invites a quote at that budget. In practice the opposite is true. A stated band tells the production team which fabric weights, hardware grades and decoration methods are in scope, and a quote built inside the band is a quote you can act on. A quote built with no band tends to come back either too expensive to use or too cheap to trust, and neither is useful.

Group B: Product Specification Fields (7-13)

The second block is the product itself, described in numbers. The test for whether a field has been filled in properly is simple: could someone make the bag from the answer without asking a follow-up question? If the answer contains the word about, or a range wider than a few per cent, or a reference to a photograph without a dimension on it, it has not been filled in properly.

Field 8 is the single most quoted number in a bag brief and the one most often given without a tolerance. Dimensions should carry a stated tolerance, typically plus or minus 3 to 5 millimetres on a soft construction, because a soft bag cannot be held to a machined tolerance and a brief that implies it can will produce a dispute at inspection. Write the tolerance into the field and it will be written into the inspection checklist later.

Field 11 is where brand and cost interact most visibly. A generic coil zipper in a standard gauge is available from stock and costs a small amount. A branded zipper with a specific puller has a lead time measured in weeks and costs several times more, and both are legitimate choices. What matters is that the choice is made in the RFQ rather than discovered when the material buyer tries to source it, because a lead-time surprise at that stage pushes the whole 35 to 50 day window.

Fields 10 and 12 are the two that drive sewing time, and sewing time is the largest single component of the labour cost in a bag. Every additional pocket is another panel to cut, another set of operations and another opportunity for a defect. Every strap attachment is a stress point that has to be reinforced and inspected. A brief that specifies a clean layout with fewer, better-executed features will always quote better than one with many features, and it will usually be a better product.

Group C: Material and Component Fields (14-19)

The third block is where the price is actually decided, and it is the block where a creator's own preferences matter least and the production team's sourcing knowledge matters most. The right way to fill these fields in is to state the performance you need and the aesthetic you want, and to ask for options rather than to name a single material you have no way to verify. Performance is measurable; a brand name on a fabric is not.

Field 14 should be answered as a specification rather than as a name. Nylon or polyester, denier, weave type, coating type and any performance requirement such as a water-repellent finish or a hydrostatic rating, plus the test method if the claim will be printed on the page. That is enough for a production team to source two or three candidate fabrics and quote each, which is far more useful than a single named fabric that may not be available in the required colour.

Field 17 is the one that catches campaigns out at the worst moment. Hardware is a bought-in component with its own minimum quantities and its own lead time, and a custom puller or an unusual plating can add weeks that no amount of urgency on the sewing line will recover. State whether stock hardware in a standard finish is acceptable. If it is, the schedule gets shorter and the quote gets cheaper, and in most cases nobody can tell the difference.

Field 19 is small, technical and worth including because it prevents a specific and common defect. Stitch density at 7 to 9 stitches per inch is the normal range for a bag of this kind, and specifying it prevents a bulk run being sewn faster and looser than the approved sample. It costs nothing to write and it is the kind of detail that separates a specification from a description.

Group D: Branding and Decoration Fields (20-23)

The fourth block is short and it generates more rework than any other, because decoration is the part of a bag where an artistic intention has to be converted into a machine instruction. The conversion has rules: an embroidery file is not the same as a print file, a logo with a fine gradient behaves differently from a flat two-colour mark, and a placement that looks right on a flat sketch may fall across a seam on the made-up bag.

Field 20 sounds trivial and it is the most common cause of a two-day delay. A logo supplied only as a flattened image has to be redrawn before a sample can be decorated, and redrawing is a design task with its own turnaround. Supply the vector file if one exists, say what it was made in, and state the colour count. If the mark is complex, say which elements are essential and which can be simplified for a small format.

Field 21 should be answered with an understanding of the cost shape. Embroidery carries a digitising setup cost and then a per-unit cost that scales with stitch count. Heat transfer carries a film setup and a low per-unit cost, and it suits fine detail. A woven label carries a weaving minimum, typically in the low thousands of pieces, which is a stock commitment. A metal plate or a rubber patch carries a tooling cost. Each is reasonable; the point is to choose in the RFQ rather than during sampling.

Field 23 is where a colour expectation becomes either a specification or an argument. A Pantone reference for the body fabric and for each logo colour turns colour into a measurable target, and the bulk run can be checked against it before packing. Without it, colour is a matter of opinion, and opinions are formed at the worst possible moment, which is when 500 units are already made. The colour matching process is worth reading before filling this field in.

Group E: Compliance, Testing and Inspection (24-26)

The fifth block is the one creators treat as paperwork and it is the one that stops shipments. Compliance is not a document you collect at the end; it is a set of decisions about materials, inks and components that have to be made before those things are bought. A campaign that discovers in week six that its target market requires a specific test has already bought the fabric, and the options at that point are expensive.

Field 24 should list every market, not the main one. A campaign shipping to the United States, the European Union and Japan has three sets of requirements, and the strictest of them governs the material choice for the whole run. Children's products attract additional and stricter requirements in most jurisdictions, and a bag aimed at children should say so explicitly here. The compliance checklist for the US market shows how much is involved.

Field 25 should name the tests rather than the concept of testing. Fabric strength, colour fastness to rubbing and light, zipper cycle testing, hardware corrosion, and substance testing for lead and phthalates are all distinct items with distinct costs and durations, and a campaign that needs three of them should say which three. Naming them at quotation stage means they can be booked to run alongside sampling rather than alongside packing.

Field 26 is where the acceptance criteria are agreed, and the answer we work to is AQL 2.5 to ISO 2859-1 against a retained golden sample and a written defect tolerance list. Say whether you will supply your own tolerance list or want one proposed. Either is fine, and having the conversation before the run means the pre-shipment inspection measures against an agreed standard rather than against an impression.

Group F: Logistics, Terms and Timeline (27-30)

The sixth block is the commercial and physical delivery frame, and it is where a quote becomes a contract. These four fields are the ones a purchase order will repeat verbatim, so they should be written once, correctly, here. Getting them wrong does not change the unit price much, but it changes the landed cost and the cash flow, and it is the block most likely to be filled in by assumption rather than by decision.

Field 27 matters more than it looks. FOB Xiamen means the unit price covers the goods and their delivery to the port and onto the vessel, and everything after that is yours: freight, insurance, duty, clearance and last-mile delivery. A creator comparing an FOB price against a delivered price from another source is comparing two different things. State which basis you are quoting on and compare like with like.

Field 28 is a cash-flow field rather than a cost field. T/T 30/70 means 30 per cent at order placement and 70 per cent before shipment, and those two dates sit either side of the 35 to 50 day production window. A campaign funded on a platform that releases money in stages needs to know that the deposit may fall before the platform has released the funds, and that the balance falls before any backer has received anything.

Field 29 is the field that quietly changes the freight bill. A bag flat-packed in a polybag has a materially lower volumetric weight than the same bag boxed, and across 500 units that difference is a real sum. Decide the packing format here, in the RFQ, so that the packing specification and the freight estimate are based on the same assumption. Field 30 is the companion to it: a care label with composition is a component, it has a lead time, and it has to be right the first time.

The Five Fields Creators Most Often Leave Blank

Across the briefs we receive, five fields are missing far more often than the others, and each absence produces a predictable failure. They are worth listing because a creator who fills in only these five has already improved the quality of the quote substantially, even if the rest of the brief is thin.

1. Colourway split. Left blank because the creator does not know yet, and it decides whether the order is producible at all at 500 pcs each.
2. Weight target. Left blank because it feels like a detail, and it determines whether the fabric and hardware can be chosen at all.
3. Target markets. Left blank because the campaign is global, and it determines which substance limits govern the material buy.
4. Packing specification. Left blank because it is assumed to be a polybag, and it moves the freight bill more than most price negotiations.
5. Reorder plan. Left blank because it is speculative, and it decides whether material and tooling are booked once or twice.

The first and third on that list are the expensive ones. A missing colourway split means the quote has to assume a single colourway, and if the campaign then wants three, the price is wrong and the schedule is wrong. A missing market list means the quote assumes the least demanding standard, and if the goods then need to meet a stricter one, the material has to be re-sourced and the tests have to be run, both of which land inside the production window.

The fourth is the one that surprises people. Packing is a per-unit cost that is easy to leave out of a comparison and easy to get wrong, and because it also sets the volumetric weight, an error here is multiplied across the freight bill. A campaign that specifies retail packaging without pricing it will find that its margin was spent on a box. A campaign that specifies a polybag for a premium reward will find that its unboxing disappointed backers.

There is a simple way to handle all five if the answer is genuinely unknown: write unknown and state when you will know. A brief that says colourway split to be decided by the campaign close, likely two ways, gives the production team something to work with. A brief that simply omits the field does not, and the difference between those two is the difference between a quote and a conversation.

What a Complete RFQ Changes About the Quote

The practical value of a complete brief is measurable in two places: the precision of the price and the length of the calendar. A brief with all thirty fields can be quoted against real material prices and a known operation count, which typically produces a figure within a narrow band and a sampling date attached to it. A brief with eight fields produces a wide range, a list of questions and a start date that depends on when the answers arrive.

The calendar effect is the larger of the two and it is worth quantifying. Each round of clarification costs roughly a day of elapsed time across a working time difference, and an incomplete brief typically generates three to five rounds. That is most of a week before sampling starts, on a programme whose entire sampling stage is 6 to 10 working days. A complete brief collapses the clarification stage to a single exchange, and that is a week of the campaign calendar recovered for free.

The second effect is on the price itself, and it works through material rather than through negotiation. A brief that states the performance required allows the sourcing side to find two or three candidate fabrics at different price points and quote each. A brief that names a single fabric allows no such search, and if that fabric is expensive or unavailable, there is no alternative to offer. Optionality is worth more than any discount a creator is likely to negotiate at 500 pcs.

The third effect is on risk, and it is the one that matters at delivery. Every field that was decided in the RFQ is a field that does not have to be decided under pressure later, and decisions made under pressure during a production run are the ones that produce defects, delays and disputes. The RFQ is cheap insurance bought at the easiest possible moment, which is before anything has been cut.

How to Send It: File Format, Attachments and Follow-Up

Format matters less than completeness, but a badly formatted brief costs the recipient time and costs you a day. Send the thirty fields as a single document, structured in the six blocks used here, with the reference images and artwork attached separately and named clearly. Do not send the specification inside an email body with images pasted at random positions, because it will have to be retyped before it can be used, and retyping is where transcription errors enter a programme.

• One document. A text file, a spreadsheet or a PDF, with the thirty fields numbered.
• Separate attachments. Artwork, reference photographs, sketches and any existing tech pack, each clearly named.
• Vector artwork. Supply the vector file if it exists; a raster-only logo adds a redrawing step.
• State the unknowns explicitly. Unknown with a date is useful; a blank field is not.
• Say when you need the quote. A stated deadline lets the team tell you honestly whether it is achievable.

The last item is worth emphasising because it is the difference between a good experience and a frustrating one. If you need a quote in three days, say so in the first message. A production team can usually meet a stated deadline or say honestly that it cannot, and either answer is better than a silence that turns into a chase. What it cannot do is invent material prices for a brief that is missing the fabric specification.

On follow-up, one exchange is normal and productive; four chases in a week is not. If you have sent a complete brief, the clarification round will be short and the quote will follow. If you find yourself being asked many questions, that is information: the brief is missing fields, and the fastest route to a price is to answer them in one go rather than one at a time. Our programme coordinator will always tell you which fields are blocking the quote.

Scoring Your Own Brief Before You Send It

Before you send, score the brief against the thirty fields and see where it stands. A brief with twenty-five or more fields filled in will be quoted quickly and accurately. A brief with fewer than fifteen will generate questions, and the questions will be about the fields that matter. This is a five-minute exercise and it is the highest-value five minutes in the whole sourcing stage.

The bottom row is stated bluntly for a reason. A brief with fewer than ten fields cannot be quoted responsibly, and a supplier who quotes it anyway is giving you a number they will renegotiate later. That is not a quote, it is a lead-generation device, and campaigns that take it at face value discover the real price after they have committed to a campaign goal. Ask for the fields to be completed instead.

The other thing worth doing before sending is the arithmetic on your own side: does the total volume clear 500 pcs per style and per colourway in each colourway you intend to offer, and does the delivery month you want leave room for 35 to 50 days of bulk plus two to four days of inspection plus freight? If either answer is no, the brief should say so, because it changes what is being quoted. Those two questions are answered on the bag MOQ and production calculator pages.

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