Knitted Bag Brief to Quote Turnaround: Five Branches and Four Speed Tiers

The Decision Tree: Five Branches That Set the Speed

Quote speed on a knitted bag is set by five branches in order: is the brief complete, is the yarn stock or custom, is the programme new or archived, does pricing need a physical sample, and does the buyer want a bed slot reserved — and the slowest branch decides the whole answer.

1. Is the brief complete? Five numbers — gauge, yarn count, finished GSM, dimensions, handle drop — plus quantity. A missing number is not a delay, it is a stop.
2. Is the yarn a stock count and shade, or a custom or dope-dyed one? Stock is priced from a book; custom has to be quoted by the mill.
3. Is the programme new, or does an archived revision already exist? An archived revision carries its own cost history and prices in hours.
4. Does the price need a physical sample, or can it be derived from the archive? A structural unknown needs a first knit before anyone commits to a number.
5. Does the buyer want a bed slot reserved with the quote? That adds a scheduling step, and it is the branch most often forgotten until the quote has already gone out.

The reason to walk the tree in order is that the branches are not equal. A custom yarn adds days; a missing GSM adds whatever it takes the buyer to answer. Buyers tend to focus on the branch they can influence, which is the first one, and that is correct: completeness is the branch that decides more quote delays than all the others combined.

It is also worth being explicit about what a quote is. It is a priced statement of a specification against a quantity and a term, valid for a stated period. It is not an estimate, and it is not a commitment to hold capacity. Distinguishing those three at the outset prevents the conversation that otherwise happens three weeks later, when a buyer treats a quote as a booked slot and a production team treats it as an expired number.

Four Turnaround Tiers

Four tiers cover knit quotations: 24 hours for a repeat against an archived revision, 48 hours for a new programme on a complete brief, three to five working days when yarn has to be priced externally, and seven or more when structural feasibility has to be established first.

Tier 3 is the one that surprises people, and it surprises them because the delay is invisible. A buyer sends a complete brief, receives an acknowledgement, and hears nothing for four days, during which the yarn is being quoted by a mill that has its own queue. Nothing is wrong; the critical path has simply moved outside the building. The mitigation is easy and worth asking for: a stock-shade equivalent priced alongside the custom one, so a decision can be made immediately rather than after the mill replies.

Tier 4 is different in kind. A structural unknown cannot be priced honestly until somebody knows whether the structure works, and the only way to find out is to knit it. A buyer in tier 4 should ask for a range rather than a number, and should expect the firm figure after the first knit, which is day 2 of a 7-working-day sampling window. Asking for a firm price before the first knit produces a number that will be revised, which is worse than a range that will not.

The Five Numbers, and the Three That Stop a Quote

Five numbers make a knit brief priceable — gauge, yarn count, finished GSM, dimensions and handle drop — and three of them stop a quote outright when missing: GSM, yarn count and quantity.

GSM is the first because price and hand both follow it. A brief with no GSM produces a quote with an assumed GSM, and the assumption is the most common cause of a price that moves on the first revision. Yarn count is the second because it drives weight, abrasion behaviour and cost per kilogram, and on a recycled or certified lot the certificate itself is a cost line. Quantity is the third because MOQ is 100 pcs per style and per colourway and the unit price moves with volume: a quote at 100 pcs and a quote at 2,000 pcs are different products in economic terms.

Gauge and handle drop can be provisionally supplied and are often settled during sampling. That is legitimate and should be marked as provisional in the brief, because a provisional number can be priced and a missing number cannot. The habit worth adopting is to mark every provisional value as provisional, so that the quote can state which of its numbers rest on an assumption and which rest on a decision.

Gauge

E7, E12 or E14; provisional is acceptable if marked

Yarn count

600D, 300D or 150D, with fibre and recycled content

Finished GSM

A number; a description stops the quote

Dimensions

Width, height, depth, to ±3 mm

Handle drop

A number in centimetres, to ±2 mm

Quantity

Per style and per colourway, at MOQ 100 pcs

Term and release

FOB Xiamen; AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1

What a Quote Must Contain to Be Comparable

A quote is only comparable to another quote if it states seven things: unit price at a stated quantity, the MOQ basis, the sampling window, the bulk window, the term, the inspection standard and the validity date — and a quote missing the last three is a number rather than a commercial offer.

• Unit price at a stated quantity per colourway, not at an unspecified volume.
• The MOQ basis: 100 pcs per style and per colourway.
• Sampling window: 7 working days, with how many correction rounds are included.
• Bulk window: 30 days from handover, or 22 days on a held revision.
• Term: FOB Xiamen, with CIF and DDP stated as available.
• Inspection standard: AQL 2.5 under an ISO 2859-1 sampling plan.
• Validity: a stated date, commonly 30 days from issue.

The validity date is the quiet one. A yarn price quoted in March is not a yarn price in September, and a quote without a validity date is either a promise nobody intended or an escape clause nobody noticed. Thirty days is the common band and is short enough to be honest and long enough to be useful. Where a programme is being compared across several producers, align the validity dates so the comparison happens on the same day; otherwise one quote is being measured against a different week's material cost.

Why a Quote Takes Five Days Instead of Two

Four causes account for almost every slow knit quote: an outside yarn price, a structural question nobody has answered, an internal approval chain on the buyer side, and a brief that arrived as a conversation rather than as a document.

The third cause is the one buyers control and rarely use. A quote that has to be approved by three people inside the buying organisation before it can be answered takes as long as the slowest of those three, and that interval is invisible to everyone outside it. Naming a single person who can answer technical questions during the quote window removes it. The fourth cause is subtler: a brief that arrives across six emails, with the kilogram weight in one and the handle drop in another, has to be reconstructed before it can be priced, and reconstruction is where numbers get lost.

Revisions: How Many, and How Fast Each One Returns

Expect two rounds of quote revision on a new programme and one on a repeat, with each revision returning in 24 hours if the change is a quantity or a colourway and in 48 hours if it touches the yarn or the structure.

The distinction is the same one that governs change control on the production side. A quantity change is arithmetic: the unit price moves along a known curve and the answer is immediate. A colourway change is nearly arithmetic, adding a set-up at 100 pcs minimum. A yarn change moves the material cost and possibly the lead time, so it has to be re-priced rather than recalculated. A structural change re-opens programming, which is not a revision at all but a new quote. Knowing which of the four a revision request is, at the moment it is made, is what keeps a quote cycle to two rounds.

What the Quote Does Not Cover

A knit quote covers the bag against a stated specification, and four things sit outside it: development cost, packaging, lab testing and freight forwarder charges — which is why a quote total and a landed total are never the same number.

Development is quoted separately, across seven line items that typically total USD 600 to USD 1,300 for an E12 tote. Packaging is separate again, from about USD 0.03 for a polybag to about USD 1.20 for a rigid gift box, before any print set-up. Lab testing is charged per standard per material. Freight depends on the term: under FOB Xiamen the buyer's forwarder handles the onward movement, and under CIF or DDP it is included against a stated destination. None of these is hidden; they are simply outside the unit price, and a buyer comparing two quotes should confirm that both have drawn the boundary in the same place.

• Development: seven line items, quoted separately from the unit price.
• Packaging: route, print method and set-up, quoted separately.
• Lab testing: per standard per material, against the named compliance target.
• Freight: onward movement sits with the buyer under FOB Xiamen.
• Bank charges, duties and destination handling: always outside the quote.

What to Do While the Quote Is Out

The interval between brief and quote is not dead time: four things can be settled in it — artwork feasibility, the compliance target, the packaging route and a provisional bed slot — and each removes a day from the critical path later.

Buyers who use the interval well receive a quote and a workable programme at the same time. Buyers who wait receive a quote and then start the four conversations, which is how a 48-hour quote turns into a three-week start. For the kickoff list that carries those four items into a brief, see knitted bag programme kickoff checklist.

Frequently Asked Questions

People Also Ask

Quote Speed Is Mostly a Property of the Brief

Two of the four tiers are decided before the brief leaves the buyer's building. A complete brief on a stock yarn prices in 48 hours. The same brief missing a GSM and a quantity waits for an answer, and the waiting is longer than the pricing ever was.

Send one document, carry the five numbers, mark what is provisional, and name one person who can answer questions during the window. For the checklist that assembles that document, see knitted bag programme kickoff checklist. For the programme framework, see custom knit bags.