How to Brief a Knitted Bag Programme: A Twelve-Item Checklist and the Seven Numbers Behind It

What a Brief Has to Answer That a Tech Pack Does Not

A brief answers the commercial questions and a tech pack answers the technical ones; the brief states purpose, market, quantity, timing and approval authority, none of which belong on a drawing and all of which change the price.

Conflating the two documents is the most common cause of a slow quotation. A tech pack sent in place of a brief contains everything needed to make the bag and nothing needed to price it: no quantity, so the volume band is unknown; no market, so the compliance target is unknown; no in-market date, so the freight mode is unknown; no named approver, so every decision is a round trip. Those four are commercial facts and they sit in the brief. The programme then needs both documents, but it needs the brief first, because the brief determines which technical questions are worth asking.

There is a second and subtler reason to separate them. A brief is a document a buying team can circulate internally and get signed off; a tech pack is not. Commercial facts — how many, by when, to where, at what price — are decisions a merchandiser and a finance function make. Technical facts are decisions a designer makes. Putting both in one document means the document has to route through both functions before anything can happen, which is the mechanism by which a two-day quotation becomes a two-week one.

Checklist Items One to Three: Purpose, Volume, Market

The first three checklist items are purpose, annual volume and destination market, and all three change the specification rather than merely describing it: purpose sets the load case, volume sets the band, and market sets the compliance target.

Purpose should be stated as a use case rather than as a category. Promotional handout, retail core range, gift-with-purchase threshold, corporate gifting and e-commerce own-range each produce a different bag at the same nominal description, and the differences are in GSM, trim count and compliance rather than in silhouette. Annual volume should be stated as a range across twelve months rather than as a first order, because the band a programme can plan yarn against is the annual figure. Market should be named by country or by bloc, since REACH, Prop 65, CPSIA and GRS apply differently and a compliance screen chosen for the wrong market is a wasted screen.

• Purpose: the use case, stated in one line, since it sets GSM, trim count and the compliance screen.
• Annual volume: a range across twelve months, not the first order alone, because yarn is planned annually.
• Destination market: named by country or bloc, so the right substance screen is selected the first time.
• Channel: retail, e-commerce, corporate or promotional, since each carries a different packing requirement.
• Price target: a landed figure per unit, which lets the programme propose a specification that reaches it.

Checklist Items Four to Six: Gauge, GSM, Yarn Count

Items four to six are the first of the seven numbers: gauge as E7, E12 or E14; finished GSM as a figure with a plus or minus 5% tolerance; and yarn count as 150D, 300D, 450D or 600D with the fibre named.

These three are the numbers that decide whether a quotation is comparable. Two quotations for the same photograph can differ by a fifth purely on GSM, because GSM drives material consumption and cycle time together. A brief that states gauge and yarn count but not GSM is the most common near-miss: the programme has two of the three and will assume the third, and the assumption will be the value that suits the default rather than the value the buyer pictured. The coherence check is worth doing on the brief itself: 320 g/m² at E12 in 300D is coherent; 320 g/m² at E14 in 600D is not, because the loops will not close.

Where a buyer genuinely does not know these three, the honest move is to say so and to give the constraint instead: a price target, a required carry life, or a hand described by reference to an existing bag. A constraint is usable; an absent field is not, because it gets filled with a default. A brief that says 320 g/m² or whatever reaches USD 4.80 landed is more useful than one that leaves GSM blank.

Checklist Items Seven to Nine: Colourways, Trim, Compliance

Items seven to nine are colourway count, the trim set and the compliance target, and of the three the one most often under-specified is the trim set, because it is usually described by name rather than by specification.

Colourway count is a number with a direct cost consequence: MOQ is 100 pcs per style and per colourway, so four colourways is a fourfold commitment against one, and each colourway is a separate yarn set-up on the bed. The trim set should be listed with a specification per line rather than named — a #5 coil zip at 45 cm with the tape dyed to the body shade is auditable, while a black zip is not. The compliance target should name the standard and the market: REACH Annex XVII, California Prop 65, CPSIA, GRS or OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100, each of which is a different screen with a different cost.

1. Gauge

E7, E12 or E14, as a number rather than a description

2. Finished GSM

A figure with plus or minus 5% tolerance

3. Yarn count and fibre

150D, 300D, 450D or 600D; polyester, rPET or nylon

4. Colourway count

A number, since MOQ applies per colourway

5. Quantity per colourway

100 pcs minimum, stated per style and per colourway

6. In-market date

A date, which sets freight mode and the backwards schedule

7. Approval authority

A named person who can sign off a sample without escalation

Checklist Items Ten to Twelve: Quantity, Timing, Approval Authority

The last three items are quantity per colourway, the in-market date and the named approver, and the third is the one that most often decides whether a programme runs in 8 weeks or in 12.

Quantity per colourway is straightforward and is stated per style and per colourway at 100 pcs minimum. The in-market date is the one that drives the schedule: it determines whether freight runs 21 days by sea or about 5 days by air, and therefore whether the backwards schedule starts 12 weeks or 9 weeks out. Approval authority is the one nobody writes down and everybody feels. A programme with a named approver who can say yes at a fit assessment without escalating will run the sampling window; a programme where every sample has to go to a committee will add three days per gate, and across five gates that is the difference between 8 weeks and close to 12.

The Three Questions a Brief Must Answer in the First Paragraph

Three questions belong in the first paragraph of any knitted bag brief — what is the bag for, which market does it ship to, and who can approve a sample — because everything downstream depends on them and none of them can be inferred from a drawing.

The first-paragraph discipline is worth adopting literally. Most briefs open with a description of the product, which is the part the programme least needs early, and bury the commercial facts on the third page or omit them entirely. Opening with the three questions means a reader who stops after one paragraph still knows enough to decide whether the programme is feasible, which is the decision that matters first. The rest of the brief is then read by someone who has already decided to proceed, and it is read more carefully as a result.

What Belongs in the Brief and What Belongs in the Tech Pack

The split is simple once stated: commercial facts go in the brief, construction facts go in the tech pack, and the two documents share only one field — the quantity, which appears in both because it belongs to both.

In practice the confusion is almost always in one direction: technical detail arrives in the brief and commercial detail does not arrive at all. A programme does not mind having too much technical information early, but it cannot quote without the commercial facts, and the absence of those is what stalls a quotation. The remedy for a buyer is to write the brief first and the pack second, in that order, even if the pack already exists. Writing the brief forces the commercial questions to be answered, and they are the ones that are usually still open.

Brief Formats: What Actually Gets Read

A brief of one page with twelve numbered items gets read and answered; a deck of eighteen slides with the same information gets skimmed, because the twelve items the programme needs are buried among the thirty-six it does not.

Length is not the issue; findability is. A long brief is fine if the twelve items are numbered and in the first two pages, and a short brief is useless if the quantity is mentioned only in a sentence about the launch plan. The format that works is an email with twelve numbered lines and a separate attachment for imagery, rather than a document in which imagery and specification alternate. The reason is practical: the twelve lines can be answered in a reply, whereas a deck has to be reconstructed into an answer, and reconstruction is where items get dropped.

The Seven Numbers Without Which No Brief Can Be Quoted

Seven numbers decide whether a brief can be quoted: gauge, GSM, yarn count, colourway count, quantity per colourway, in-market date and the number of people who have to approve a sample — and the last of the seven is the one most briefs leave out.

Six of the seven are self-explanatory and the seventh deserves a note. The number of approvers is a number with a calendar consequence: each additional approver adds decision latency at each gate, and across five gates each additional day of latency costs five days of calendar. A brief that names one approver is not merely tidier; it is measurably faster, and it is faster in the part of the schedule where nobody is tracking the cause. Where a brand cannot name a single approver, the next best thing is to name one and to state a maximum response time for the others.

What Happens After the Brief Is Sent

A complete brief produces a feasibility note in about two working days, a quotation against the stated specification, and a proposed backwards schedule from the in-market date — and the three together are what a buyer should expect back rather than a price alone.

A price alone is a warning sign. It usually means the programme has filled the absent fields with defaults, and the defaults will be overturned by the first clarification, which is how a quoted figure becomes a different confirmed figure. A feasibility note states whether the shape works at the stated gauge and GSM; a quotation prices the stated specification; a backwards schedule shows what has to happen by when. All three are inexpensive to produce from a complete brief and all three are unreliable from an incomplete one.

Sending a Brief That Gets a Usable Answer

The practical test of a brief is whether it can be answered in a reply, and a twelve-item brief with seven numbers can be — which is the difference between a quotation in two working days and a question round that costs a week.

From that answer the programme runs its standard windows: 7 working days of sampling and 30 days of bulk production from the approved handover, released against AQL 2.5 under an ISO 2859-1 sampling plan. MOQ is 100 pcs per style and per colourway, FOB Xiamen is the standard term with CIF and DDP available, and the reference unit cost for a standard E12 tote at specification is USD 4.80. Capacity behind the brief is 7 production lines running about 200,000 pcs per month, which is why the constraint on most programmes is the brief itself rather than the floor.

Frequently Asked Questions

People Also Ask

A Brief Is a Set of Decisions, Not a Description

The best briefs read like a list of decisions already taken: this many, in this market, by this date, approved by this person, at this gauge and this GSM. The worst read like a description of a product and leave the decisions to be taken later, by someone who does not have the commercial context to take them well.

For the document that follows the brief, see knitted bag tech pack template. For the volume commitment behind checklist item ten, see knitted bag MOQ explained, and for the programme windows a brief opens, see custom knit bags.