Questions to Ask a Handbag Manufacturer Before Sending Your Tech Pack

What should you ask before sending a tech pack? Twelve questions, and they cost about forty minutes to send and one working day to answer. In return they tell you whether MOQ 500 pcs per style / colourway is per colourway or per order, whether sampling is 6-10 working days or 12-15, whether bulk is 35-50 days or an optimistic 25, and whether inspection is AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1 or just the word strict. Ask before the tech pack rather than after the sample, because a question answered at brief stage costs an email and the same question answered at revision stage costs 6-10 working days. The twelve below are grouped by what they protect — your calendar, your specification, your money and your compliance position — with the answer shape that tells you whether you are dealing with a production partner or a sales desk.

What Forty Minutes of Questions Buys You

A tech pack is a specification, and a specification sent to the wrong partner produces a confident sample built on the wrong assumptions. The arithmetic of asking first is simple: twelve questions cost one email and roughly one working day. Discovering the same twelve answers after the first sample costs a revision round of 6-10 working days, and discovering them during bulk costs 35-50 days plus material already bought.

There is a second reason to ask first, which is that the answers tell you how to write the pack. If the partner works to tolerances in millimetres, you write tolerances in millimetres. If it specifies hardware by plating stack and salt-spray hours, you specify that too. The questions are not an interrogation; they are a way of learning the vocabulary the specification needs to be written in.

There is a third, quieter benefit. Asking in one batch forces you to decide what you want before somebody shows you something else. Buyers who send a vague brief and then react to a sample end up specifying backwards — choosing the material after seeing the prototype, then discovering the landed cost will not support the retail price they planned. Twelve questions asked first put the price ceiling, the material and the calendar in one document, and every later decision gets checked against it.

The Twelve Questions Grouped by What They Protect

Grouped rather than listed at random, because the group tells you what you are defending. Three protect the calendar, three protect the specification, three protect the money, and three protect the position you have to defend to a retailer or a marketplace. Score the answers on one axis: does the reply contain a number, a name or a standard, or does it contain an adjective?

• Calendar. What is the MOQ per colourway? How many working days to a first sample? Which slot is booked, and when does booking close?
• Specification. Which tannery supplies the hide? What tolerances do you work to in millimetres? How is hardware specified and tested?
• Money. Is tooling billed separately or amortised, and who owns it? What are the payment stages? How long is the price valid?
• Compliance. Which test reports can you issue for my market? What is the current social audit reference? Which AQL do you inspect to?

Questions 1-3: Protect Your Calendar

Question one: is the MOQ 500 pcs per style / colourway, or 500 per order? The difference is a factor of three on a capsule, because each colourway is its own dye lot with its own minimum. Question two: how many working days to a first sample, and when does the clock start? The answer should be 6-10 working days from an approved brief, or 12-15 for framed, hand-woven or stacked work.

How Do You Ask About Capacity Without Offending Anyone?

Question three is the one buyers forget: which slot is booked, and how much of next month is already committed? Capacity of about 200,000 pcs per month across 7 production lines is meaningless without utilisation, and the two periods that distort every promise are Chinese New Year and the autumn shipping rush. Ask in September about a December slot and you will get a different answer than you got in June.

Questions 4-6: Protect Your Specification

Question four: which tannery supplies the hide, and is it audited under the Leather Working Group environmental protocol? Material is 40-55% of unit cost, and genuine leather is a phrase rather than an answer. Ask for the thickness at the same time: 1.2-1.6 mm full-grain for a tote, 1.0-1.4 mm top-grain for a shoulder bag, 0.6-1.0 mm PU-coated for a light crossbody.

Question five: what tolerances do you work to? A real answer is in millimetres — ±1.5 mm on cut panels above 100 mm, ±1.0 mm on hardware hole positions, a seam allowance of 8 mm on leather and 10 mm on canvas, and a stitch length of 2.8 mm, which is about nine stitches per inch. Question six: how is hardware specified? A real answer names the alloy, the plating stack in microns and a salt-spray hour count to ASTM B117.

Questions 7-9: Protect Your Money

Question seven: is tooling billed separately or amortised into the unit price, and who owns it? An embossing die, a woven-label setup and a hardware mould are physical assets, and the answer should also say where they are stored and whether they will run for another brand. Question eight: what are the payment stages? A deposit releases material and books the slot; the balance belongs against the inspection report rather than against a date.

Question nine: how long is the price valid, and on what material basis? Hide and coated-fabric costs move, and a quotation with no validity date will be re-quoted when they do. Ask for the basis too — a price calculated against a stated cost per square foot can be checked at reorder, and one calculated against nothing cannot. At programme volume, ask for the price to be held for the season.

Questions 10-12: Protect Your Compliance Position

Question ten: which test reports can you issue for my market? For the European Union, REACH covering Annex XVII substances such as chromium VI, azo dyes, nickel release and phthalates. For California, a Proposition 65 review of hardware, coated trim and dyes. For items marketed to children, CPSIA lead and phthalate limits plus tracking labels. Ask which are included and which are chargeable.

Question eleven: what is the current social audit reference? The two frameworks retail buyers ask for are amfori BSCI and Sedex SMETA, and both produce a report with a reference number and a date — ask for both, not the logo. Question twelve: which AQL do you inspect to? AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1 is the reference for bags, and the partner should also be able to state the sample size: 50 units from a 500-piece lot, failing on the fourth major defect.

How to Read the Answers

Read for nouns, not tone. A production partner answers with a tannery name, a line number, a standard number and a storage location, and it will volunteer limitations you did not ask about — that 500 pcs is one dye lot, that a turn-lock pushes the run to the top of the 35-50 day range. Volunteered limitations are the most reliable signal in the whole exchange.

Two follow-ups are worth adding where the answers are thin. Ask for a counter sample cut from the actual bulk material rather than from sample-room stock, and ask for the inspection report from a recent order of comparable size with the customer name removed. The first tests material honesty; the second tests whether the AQL quoted is the AQL used. Neither is unreasonable, and both are answered within a day by a partner that holds the documents. Where they are refused, the useful move is not to push but to note it and move the candidate down the shortlist — a refusal at brief stage is the cheapest refusal you will ever receive.

What a Tech Pack Must Contain Before It Leaves

Once the answers are in, write the pack in the vocabulary they revealed. A pack that arrives with dimensions, tolerances, materials by thickness and denier, hardware by plating stack, branding positions and packaging artwork keeps sampling inside the 6-10 working day window. A pack that arrives as three reference photographs and a price hope does not.

What Belongs on the Pack Itself?

• Dimensions with tolerances. Length, height, depth, strap drop in millimetres, plus ±1.5 mm on panels and ±1.0 mm on hardware holes.
• Materials by number. Leather thickness and temper, lining denier, interlining weight in gsm, foam thickness where used.
• Hardware by stack and size. Alloy, plating microns, salt-spray hours, rivet cap and post, magnetic closure diameter and pull force, strap webbing width.
• Construction by measurement. Seam allowance, stitch length at 2.8 mm, topstitch offset, edge finish width and number of coats.
• Branding and packaging. Method, position and size per mark; dust bag, hangtag on 350 gsm card, care card, barcode symbology, carton marks.
• Commercial and compliance. Quantity per colourway, target retail price, trade term, launch date, and the reports your channel requires.

Send the Questions in One Numbered List

Format matters more than it should. Send all twelve as one numbered list and you get one complete reply. Send them as a chain of emails over a fortnight and you get six partial replies, two of which contradict each other. Attach the draft tech pack to the same message, so the answers arrive against a specification rather than in the abstract. The same discipline applies to revisions: one numbered list per round, written with measurements rather than marked-up photographs, because a circled photograph generates a question and a measurement generates a correction.

Programmes have shipped through our validated partner factory Quanzhou Yingming Bags since 2014, and the twelve questions are answered in writing before any brief is accepted — tannery, tolerances, tooling, payment, reports, audit reference and AQL, all in one reply. Use the capability checklist for bag producers to build the shortlist first, then send the list. If a reply is thin, the seven tests that expose a sourcing and programme-management company explain what a missing noun usually means, and the nine red flags in a quotation cover what to do when the answers never arrive.

Checking an Answer Against a Source Outside the Reply

Half of the twelve answers can be checked against something other than the answerer. A tannery name either resolves on a published environmental protocol list or it does not; an audit reference carries a validity date that covers your reorder month or it does not; a restricted-substance report was written for one material in one colour and is silent about the coated body and the lining inside the same bag. Ten minutes spent checking four references is worth more than another round of questions, because a checkable answer that fails tells you where the file really stands, and it tells you inside one working day.

• Tannery reference. A Leather Working Group audit returns a tannery name, a rating and a date; where the date is more than about 18 months old the audit is normally mid-renewal rather than current.
• Audit expiry. An amfori BSCI or Sedex SMETA report runs for twelve months; check the expiry against your own reorder month rather than against the day the reply was written.
• Test scope. A REACH report is issued against a named material, so one covering a 210D lining says nothing about the coated body next to it; ask for one line per substrate.
• Three names. The beneficiary on the pro forma invoice, the holder on the test report and the name on the business registration should reconcile, or be stated as parent and subsidiary.

From First Email to Booked Slot, in Days

The twelve answers are useless if they arrive later than the decision they inform. Worked into a sequence they fit inside one week: ask on day one, read and verify on days two and three, rewrite the tech pack in the vocabulary the answers revealed on days four and five, and authorise the counter sample by day six. Two delays break that sequence with predictable regularity: three people approving one physical swatch, and waiting for a second colourway instead of freezing the first.

The Bill for Each Question Left Unasked

Each of the twelve has a cost attached to its answer, and that cost always arrives later than the question would have. An acceptance standard is free at brief stage and expensive at the inspection table; a tooling clause is free before the deposit moves and unobtainable after it. Pricing the gaps this way settles the argument about whether forty minutes of questioning is worth having, because the four items below account for most of the money a first handbag order loses.

Keeping the Twelve Answers Somewhere You Can Reuse Them

The answers have a shelf life, and the shelf life is the part buyers forget. A quotation is normally valid for 30-60 days at programme volume; a restricted-substance report is commissioned against one material lot; an audit reference carries a twelve-month expiry. Writing each answer onto one sheet, with the date it was given and the document behind it, turns a useful exchange into a reusable file, and it is the reason a second programme can open against a stored specification rather than against a first email.

• Date every answer. A verification dated today tells you nothing in eight months; the date beside it says whether to re-check before the reorder.
• Record the basis. Where the price was calculated against a stated cost per square foot, note the figure so a later re-quote can be argued with a number rather than with a mood.
• File the limitation. A volunteered limitation, such as 500 pcs being one dye lot, belongs in the record; it is the most reliable line in the reply and the first one forgotten.
• Set a refresh date. One line at the foot of the sheet, 30 days before the reorder: the month the quotation, the test reports and the audit all have to be renewed.

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