Handbag Tech Pack Template: Sections Every New Brand Needs

Which sections does a handbag tech pack need before a first sample can be cut? Eight: a cover page with commercial data, dimensioned drawings with tolerances, a bill of materials with unit costs, a construction and stitch specification, a hardware schedule in microns, a branding and packaging schedule, a compliance and test block, and a revision history with sign-off. Priced in days, a missing section costs 6-10 working days of sampling plus 3-6 days of review, which is why the two sections most often skipped — the stitch specification and the hardware schedule — are the two that generate the most rework. The template below is eight pages, each one a form to fill rather than an essay to write.

The template in numbers

What a Tech Pack Is Worth in Days and Dollars

A tech pack is the cheapest insurance in a development programme. It costs a day or two to assemble and it decides how many of the 6-10 working days of sampling windows a first line spends. Worked backwards from the calendar, the arithmetic is unforgiving: each unresolved section becomes one more round, each round is 6-10 working days plus 3-6 days of review, and two extra rounds is the difference between hitting a season and missing it.

A Vancouver outdoor brand sent a brief for a 30 cm convertible shoulder bag with three photographs and a rendered silhouette, and no written dimensions. The first sample came back in 8 working days with the strap anchors 12 mm narrower than intended and the webbing 20 mm webbing used where a 25 mm had been assumed; the second corrected both and arrived two days after the photography booking. The drawings had existed. They had not been dimensioned, and dimensioning is the part of a drawing that does the work.

• One missing section costs one round, which is 9-16 calendar days including review.
• Two missing sections usually cost two rounds, because a revision list can only carry the faults it can see.
• A complete pack costs one to two days and is reused on every repeat of the style.
• The reuse is the return. A stored tech pack is what lets a repeat order skip sampling entirely.

Section One: Cover Page and Commercial Data

The cover page carries the commercial facts that decide what the rest of the pack can specify. Without a target retail price there is no ceiling to engineer against, and without a quantity per colourway there is no basis for a material buy. This page is read first and quoted from, so it should be the most boring and most complete page in the document.

• Style name, style code and season, so revision history can be attached to a stable identifier.
• Quantity per colourway, remembering that 500 pcs is per style and per colourway.
• Target retail price and target landed cost per SKU, which is the ceiling the specification is engineered to.
• Destination market and trade term: FOB Xiamen, CIF or DDP, with payment by T/T.
• Launch date and the date sampling must finish, stated as dates rather than as a month.
• Contact for approvals and the turnaround that contact commits to during revision.

Section Two: Dimensioned Drawings With Tolerances

Drawings carry three things: orthographic views, dimensions in millimetres, and tolerances. Orthographic means front, back, both sides, base and a cross-section; six views is normal for a structured body and four is enough for a soft one. Every dimension gets a tolerance, because a dimension without one is a wish, and the conventions are stable across the trade.

Two conventions prevent most disputes. State a datum — a named edge or corner from which positions are measured — and state pocket dimensions as internal clear values after lining, because a lining turn costs 1-2 mm at every mouth. The guide to what a tech pack should actually include covers the same ground section by section, and the pattern note on why a good pattern beats a render explains why the cross-section view matters more than the pretty one.

Section Three: Bill of Materials With Unit Costs

A bill of materials lists every input by name, specification, source type and consumption per bag. It is the page that turns a drawing into a price, and it is the page where a substitution is caught: if the BOM says 210D ripstop at 70 gsm and the swatch card says 190T at 55 gsm, the discrepancy surfaces in a day rather than at inspection.

• Each material on one line: name, specification, colour reference, supplier type and unit.
• Consumption per bag, in square feet for shell materials and in metres or pieces for trims.
• Unit cost and currency, with a note on whether the price is held per order or per season.
• Lead time per line, because the longest line governs the material confirmation window of 2-4 days.
• Substitute policy: whether an equivalent may be used without written approval. It should not be.

Add a yield line. Hides yield 80-85 percent and synthetics 88-92 percent, and the difference is priced into every unit. A BOM that ignores yield produces a quotation that looks right and a landed cost that does not.

Section Four: Construction and Stitch Specification

The most-skipped section and the one that decides whether a bag survives its warranty period. Four lines cover it, and all four are measurable at the bench with a gauge and a ruler, which is why an inspector counts them first.

1. Thread: Tex 40 bonded polyester on bodies, Tex 69 at load points such as strap anchors and handle joints.
2. Stitch density: 7-9 stitches per inch, counted with a gauge rather than judged by eye.
3. Seam allowance: 10 mm on load-bearing joints, 6-8 mm on lining seams and pocket mouths.
4. Reinforcement: a bartack over a minimum contact patch of 40 mm by 25 mm behind every strap anchor, plus an interlining patch behind every closure.

Two optional lines repay the effort. State the seam type at each joint — plain, bound, turned or French — because a turned edge and a raw painted edge read as different price points on the same silhouette. And state the edge finish explicitly: edge paint in two to four coats sanded between each, or a turned and topstitched edge, which costs more and lasts longer.

Section Five: Hardware Schedule in Microns

Hardware is the second most-skipped section, and skipping it is expensive because a plating bath costs the same at 300 pieces as at 3,000. The schedule lists each component, its base metal, its plating stack in microns, its colour reference and the test it must pass.

Two columns get filled from the drawing rather than guessed: the finish name, which is a colour reference such as light gold or gunmetal rather than a description, and the test method, which should be named rather than implied. Where a component carries a logo, add the tooling line: who paid for the mould, where it is stored, and whether it will ever run for another brand.

Section Six: Branding, Labelling and Packaging

Branding is a position in millimetres and a method, not a note on a drawing. State the method — emboss, deboss, foil, screen print, woven label, metal plate or embroidery — and the position measured from two stated datum edges with a tolerance of plus or minus 2 mm. Emboss depth of 0.3-0.5 mm is the normal range on leather and 0.2-0.3 mm on a coated synthetic; deeper reads better in a photograph and thinner survives abrasion better.

• Logo artwork as a vector file, with the pantone or foil colour referenced to a Pantone TCX code at Delta E 2.0 or better.
• Woven label: dimensions, fold type and stitch position, usually 20 mm by 45 mm at the lining seam.
• Hangtag: 300 gsm art card, dimensions, string type and any barcode symbology.
• Dust bag: material, gsm, drawcord type and print method.
• Carton: five-ply board, units per carton, carton marks and dimensions, with the polybag warning text at a minimum 4 mm type height.

Packaging is ordered separately and arrives late more often than the bags do, so put dates on this page as well as specifications. Marketplace channels add their own rules on barcodes and prep, and those belong here rather than in an email.

Section Seven: Compliance and Test Requirements

Compliance is a section in the pack rather than a question at shipment. Naming the standards up front means the material is sourced to meet them rather than tested after it has been bought, and the difference is two weeks and occasionally a rejected shipment.

• REACH Annex XVII restrictions on chromium VI, azo dyes, nickel release and phthalates for the European market.
• Proposition 65 review of hardware and coated trim for California; CPSIA documentation where a bag is marketed to children.
• Global Recycled Standard transaction certificate for any recycled content claim, and OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 where textiles sit against skin.
• ISO 105-B02 light fastness at grade 4, AATCC 8 crocking at grade 4 dry and grade 3 wet, ISO 12947-2 abrasion at 20,000 rubs for daily carry.
• ASTM B117 salt spray at 24 hours to first corrosion on plated hardware.
• BSCI or Sedex audit reference and an ISO 9001 quality system reference, both available for our validated partner factory Quanzhou Yingming Bags.

Section Eight: Revision History and Approval

The last section is the one that makes the document a record rather than a snapshot. Every revision is numbered, dated and summarised in one line, and each round ends with a signature and a date on both sides. A numbered history means the third sample can be checked against the second revision rather than against a memory, which is the only reliable way to stop an item being lost between rounds.

• Number every revision, one row per round, with the date and a one-line summary of what changed.
• Reference the annotated photographs rather than describing the fault in prose.
• Separate must-fix from nice-to-have so a round can be approved on the must-fix list alone.
• Sign and date the sealed sample and record where it is held, because it is the standard for the bulk lot.

The One-Page Template You Can Copy

Condensed to a checklist, the eight sections fit on a single page. Tick each one before the pack is sent; an unticked box is a round of sampling waiting to happen.

Two companions finish the picture. The acceptance-first guide to building a tech pack covers how the document is read on the sampling bench, and the prototype costing guide turns the bill of materials into a number before any tooling is cut. The process reference sets the wider sequence from brief to inspection.

One Tote, Filled In: All Eight Sections on a Page

The template is easier to copy when it has numbers in it. Below is a single 32 cm tote filled in as it would be sent, with the eight sections compressed into one table. Nothing here is unusual; that is the point. Every field is one that a sampling bench expects to find without asking.

How to Send the Pack So It Is Quoted in a Day

A quotation takes a day when the pack answers every question in it and takes a week when it does not. The format matters as much as the content, because a file that cannot be measured or plotted has to be redrawn before anything can be priced.

• One PDF, under 5 MB. Drawings, BOM, hardware schedule and branding in a single document with a page per section, so nothing is lost between files.
• Vector artwork for every mark. An AI, EPS or SVG file rather than a PNG, with the Pantone TCX code named alongside it.
• Dimensioned drawings, not renders. A render shows proportion; a dimensioned orthographic view with a datum is what a pattern can be graded from.
• Reference photographs, three to six. Overall views plus the details that matter: the strap attachment, the closure, the interior.
• A target retail price. Material follows the retail price, so a ceiling turns a guess into a specification.

How the Pack Becomes the Inspection Checklist

A specification only becomes enforceable when it is copied into the document an inspector holds. ISO 2859-1 answers how many units to draw and how many defects fail a lot; it does not say what a defect is. That comes from the pack, which is why the transfer below should be done at approval rather than at inspection.

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