Making two quotes comparable

A quotation is a claim about three things at once: a specification, a quantity and a price basis. Change any one of them and the number changes with it, which is why most quote comparisons fail before the arithmetic starts. The two quotes are not wrong; they are answers to different questions.

Why MOQ matters more than unit price

Because at low quantities the unit price is mostly setup, not material. A mould, a colour changeover, a print plate and the machine time to dial in a run are fixed costs, and the factory spreads them across the units you order. Double the quantity and the fixed part is spread twice as thin, which is why the same lure can quote at US$2.30 at 200 units and US$1.48 at 2,000 without anything about the product changing.

This has a practical consequence that buyers miss. Negotiating the unit price at a fixed quantity is arguing about the wrong number, because the lever is the quantity, not the margin. If a target price is out of reach at your order size, the honest options are to raise the quantity, simplify the product, or accept that this factory's setup cost is higher than another's — and the last one is a real difference, not a negotiating position.

What FOB and EXW actually change

They change who pays for the distance between the factory gate and your warehouse, and therefore what the number in front of you means.

A Hebei EXW price is not comparable with a Weihai FOB price until both carry the same scope, and the gap between them is usually larger than the difference the buyer was trying to measure. The correction is arithmetic rather than judgement: add inland freight and export handling to the EXW number, or ask the EXW factory to quote FOB as well. The second is faster and costs nothing.

What makes two quotes incomparable

Five differences, and any one of them is enough.

A different price basis, covered above. A different order quantity, because the fixed cost is spread differently. A different material — PVC and TPE soft plastics behave differently in the water and price differently per kilogram, and a quote that does not name the material is not a quote for your product. A different hardware specification, since a named hook and ring is a cost line and "equivalent hardware" is an open one. And different packaging, because a blister card, a poly bag and a printed box are three products at the packing station.

Where two quotes differ on one of these, the honest move is not to average them but to send the same specification to both and ask again. The reference bands on this page exist to tell you whether a corrected quote is plausible, not to replace the correction.

What moves a band between two builds

Four inputs move a reference band, and only one of them is the factory's margin.

Material cost moves with resin and metal prices, and it moves fastest on soft plastics, where the body is most of the unit cost. Hardware moves a hard lure more than the body does: a named treble hook and split ring can be a third of the landed cost of a small minnow. Run length moves the number through the setup spread described above. And finish — plating, salt-spray treatment, foil, printed eyes — is where a specification quietly becomes a different product.

What does not move a band is the cluster. Cluster reputation describes the supply base, not the price of your specification, and a well-specified product in Hebei and the same specification in Weihai differ by the inputs above rather than by geography.

What to do before comparing anything

Three steps, in this order.

Fix the specification in writing, including the material, the named hardware and the packaging, so that both factories are quoting the same product. State the quantity and the destination market, because both change the answer. Ask for the price basis explicitly, and ask for it to appear on the quotation rather than in the covering message.

Only then compare. A comparison made before those three steps produces a ranking that reverses as soon as the missing fields are filled in, and the reversal is usually blamed on the supplier rather than on the comparison.

Why does MOQ matter more than unit price?

For anything printed or moulded, setup cost sets the floor — not material. That has three consequences:

• A stock colourway can often be produced in a fraction of the MOQ of a custom one, because the setup was already paid by someone else.
• Paying tooling as a separate line item usually drops the per-unit MOQ more than any negotiation.
• Comparing a printer's MOQ with a trading company's MOQ compares two different things: one is quoting setup, the other is quoting a sub-supplier's minimum.

What does FOB and EXW actually change?

What makes two quotes incomparable?

What should you do before you compare anything?

1. Normalise the unit across every quote.
2. Normalise the order quantity to the volume you would actually place.
3. Normalise the basis to FOB with a named port.
4. Place each figure against the band for its sub-category.
5. Treat anything far below the band as a different specification, not a bargain.

What moves a band between two builds?

• Material cost: resin, salt content, blank grade, metal for hardware.
• Order quantity: the same tooling across 5,000 and 50,000 pcs prices differently.
• Colourway count: each extra colourway is a line change, not a new mould.
• Packaging: retail packaging changes the unit cost and raises the MOQ.
• Freight: the basis decides who pays it, and rates move within a 90-day window.

Which numbers are not comparable, and why?

• A per-piece figure against a per-set figure —2 different units.
• 1,000 pcs against 50,000 pcs —the tooling is spread across 50 times the volume.
• FOB against EXW —4 cost lines sit inside one and outside the other.
• A 2024 quotation against a current band —material and freight have moved.

Where this sits in the process

This page is one topic out of the verification standard. The overview is China fishing tackle price benchmark, and the other topics on this page are listed there.