Six questions to ask before placing a 1,000-unit RFQ.

The checklist our reps run through on every new buyer call — before anyone talks price.

Why price comes last

A 1,000-unit RFQ is usually a five-figure commitment, and the expensive failures we've witnessed almost never came from paying too much per unit. They came from the questions nobody asked before the deposit cleared. These are the six our team runs through on every new buyer call, in order, and what each one is actually protecting you from.

1. Who is the end user, specifically?

Not 'students' — which students, carrying what, how far, in what weather? A bag for nursing students hauling 6kg of textbooks across a rainy campus is a different spec from a bag for a coding bootcamp's welcome kit. Every downstream decision — fabric weight, strap build, capacity, price point — hangs off this answer, and vague answers here are how programs end up with a technically fine bag that nobody uses.

2. What's the realistic delivery date — and what happens if it slips?

Production takes the time it takes; the question is what's stacked behind it. A trade-show giveaway has a hard date with zero forgiveness, which changes how much you should pay for schedule buffer, whether part of the run should airfreight, and whether a factory's optimistic timeline should be believed at all. If a two-week slip would kill the program, the program needs a different plan than the cheapest quote.

3. What's the total budget — landed, not FOB?

Buyers anchor on the unit price and forget the journey: freight, duties, customs brokerage, inland delivery, and testing typically add 20 to 35% to an FOB price. We ask for the landed budget per unit, then work backwards to what factory price it supports. It's the difference between a program that pencils and a surprise in month three.

4. Which features are load-bearing, and which are nice-to-have?

Every RFQ arrives with a feature list. The useful exercise is forcing it into two columns, because at 1,000 units each feature is a real cost: a laptop cradle, a custom-dyed lining, and an extra zip pocket can each move the unit price by 40 cents to $2. Knowing in advance that the USB port is sacrificial but the RFID pocket isn't lets the negotiation trade intelligently instead of emotionally.

5. How will the logo be applied — and have you seen it at size?

Branding is where reorders are won and lost. Embroidery, screen print, heat transfer, and PU patches behave differently on different fabrics, age differently, and price differently. We ask for the actual artwork early because a five-color gradient logo that's beautiful on a slide deck may be unembroiderable at 60mm wide — and it's far cheaper to learn that before sampling than after 1,000 bags.

6. What does success look like in 12 months?

A reorder? Sell-through above 70%? Staff actually wearing the thing? The answer tells us what to optimize — durability for a multi-year program, unboxing for a gifting play, margin for retail — and it tells the buyer something too. If nobody on the call can describe success, the RFQ isn't ready, and the kindest thing anyone can do is say so before the deposit.

Six questions, maybe twenty minutes. We've never seen a program fail because of them, and we've watched several get rescued by them. Price matters — but price is the easy part.

Related reading: Once you know your feature list, the next step is a clean spec sheet — see our Wholesale guide The Custom Backpack Design Guide.