What a Clothing Factory Needs Before They'll Quote You | NovaSupplier
What a Clothing Factory Needs Before They'll Quote You
Matias Santos, Founder·
You found twelve Portuguese factories and sent the same email to all of them: "Hi, I'm starting a clothing brand, can you tell me your prices and MOQ?" Three replied. Two asked for information you didn't have ready. One sent back a number that didn't match your other quotes, because none of you were comparing the same thing. This isn't a Portugal problem or a factory-being-difficult problem. It's what happens when a request for quote doesn't contain what a factory actually needs to price your product. Here's what a factory needs to see before it'll give you a number you can act on.
What "no reply" actually means
A Portuguese cut-and-sew factory with 40-80 machinists gets dozens of cold inquiries a month, more during peak sourcing season ahead of SS and AW collections. Someone on the export or commercial side has to read each one and decide, in about thirty seconds, whether it's worth a reply.
A message that says "can you tell me your prices" gives them nothing to triage with. They don't know if you need 50 units or 5,000. They don't know if you're asking about jersey tees or structured outerwear with bonded seams. They don't know if you have a tech pack or a Pinterest board. So the message sits, and eventually it's buried under the next day's inquiries.
This isn't rudeness. It's the same reason you don't reply to every cold DM your brand gets. The factory is protecting the only resource it can't get back: production time on a line that's already booked weeks out.
The two things that happen to a vague RFQ
It gets ignored. Not maliciously, just deprioritized indefinitely behind requests that are easier to action.
It gets a placeholder quote. Some factories will send back a rough number rather than lose the lead entirely, often a per-unit price that assumes a generic spec and a quantity in the middle of their usual range. This number is not meant to be relied on, and brands who treat it as a real quote end up confused later when the real number comes in 30-40% different.
Neither outcome gets you what you actually need, which is a quote you can compare against other quotes and make a decision on.
What a factory actually needs to price your product
Pricing a garment means pricing fabric, trims, cutting, sewing time, finishing, and packaging, against a specific quantity. Every one of those line items needs an input. Here's what feeds each one.
The construction. What is the garment, exactly, not "a hoodie" but a hoodie with a specific hood construction, a kangaroo pocket or no pocket, ribbed cuffs or raw hem. A flat sketch with callouts is enough at this stage, it doesn't need to be a full 15-page tech pack.
Fabric composition and weight. A 100% cotton 280 GSM French terry and a cotton-poly blend 220 GSM single jersey are different products with different costs, different machines, and sometimes different factories entirely. If you don't know your GSM yet, say so and ask the factory to recommend a range based on the hand-feel and drape you're going for.
Measurements with tolerances. A size chart with finished garment measurements, plus a tolerance (+/- 1cm is standard for most categories), tells the pattern maker what "correct" actually means. Without it, the sample maker uses judgment, and that judgment may not match yours.
Quantity, broken down, not totalled. This is the single biggest source of quote confusion, and it gets its own section below.
Target price or price band. Founders are often taught to hide this, worried the factory will price up to meet it. In practice, telling a factory "we're targeting €18-22 landed per unit" lets them tell you immediately whether you're in the right tier, the right fabric class, and the right factory, rather than spending three weeks finding out the hard way.
Timeline. When you need ex-factory delivery, and whether that's firm or exploratory. A factory quoting for a launch in six weeks prices differently than one quoting for a collection planned a year out.
Certifications, if any. OEKO-TEX, GOTS, or other requirements change what fabric and trim suppliers are eligible, which changes lead time and sometimes cost. Say so upfront rather than discovering mid-sampling that your fabric doesn't qualify.
If you don't have a tech pack yet
Most first-season founders don't, and that's fine, but a flat sketch with labeled callouts and a basic measurement chart is a low bar to clear before reaching out, not a luxury. A freelance technical designer can build a usable first tech pack for a few hundred euros, and it's one of the highest-leverage purchases a new brand makes, because it's the document every quote, every sample, and every quality dispute will be measured against.
The quantity question that kills more quotes than anything else
Here is the pattern that derails more RFQs than any other single issue: a brand presents an aggregate number that sounds substantial, "we want 600 units across our new collection," when what they actually mean is 8 styles at roughly 75 units each, split across 2-3 colorways, which works out to 25-35 units per colorway per size run.
That 600 number and that 25-unit number are not the same conversation. Most Portuguese cut-and-sew factories set their MOQ per colorway per style, not per overall order, and that minimum typically sits somewhere between 100 and 300 units depending on construction complexity, lower for simple jersey, higher for anything with bonded seams, multiple fabrics, or technical finishing. A factory that requires 150 units per colorway will look at a 600-unit order broken into 25-unit colorway runs and either decline or quote a price so far above what the brand expected that it reads as a rejection.
This is especially common in technical and performance categories, where a brand's "small collection" naturally fragments into many low-volume SKUs by design, women's and men's cuts, multiple sizes, multiple colorways, each one individually below the threshold a factory needs to justify changing over the line.
The fix isn't ordering more than you need. It's presenting your quantities the way a factory actually evaluates them: per style, per colorway, with the size breakdown visible, so the factory can see real run sizes in the first message instead of discovering the mismatch three emails in. If your per-colorway runs are genuinely below what most Portuguese factories want, say so directly and ask whether they have flexibility, work with deadstock or in-house fabric for smaller runs, or can suggest a factory that specializes in lower minimums. That's a five-minute conversation instead of a six-week dead end.
What changes when your RFQ is complete
A factory that receives construction details, fabric and GSM, measurements with tolerances, quantity broken down by colorway, a target price band, a timeline, and any certification requirements can usually return a real quote within days, not because they're being generous, but because there's nothing left to ask. That quote is also one you can compare directly against a second and third factory's quote, because everyone priced the same inputs.
This is the same logic that makes direct sourcing work better than the agent model long-term: transparency on what's actually being priced lets you compare real numbers instead of numbers that have already been adjusted for what someone else thought you could afford.
The honest minimum checklist
Before you send your next RFQ, you should be able to check off:
A construction description or sketch with key callouts
Fabric composition and target GSM, or a request for the factory's recommendation
A measurement chart with tolerances, even a simple one
Quantity broken down by style, colorway, and size, not a single total
A target price band per unit
A realistic timeline for samples and bulk delivery
Any required certifications
If you're missing two or three of these, that's normal for a first RFQ. If you're missing all of them, that's why the replies have been quiet.
What to do if you're not there yet
You don't need a perfect tech pack to start a conversation, you need enough specificity that a factory can tell whether your project is a fit before committing time to it. Say plainly what you don't know yet, "we don't have final GSM confirmed, can you recommend based on a heavier mid-layer feel," and let the factory help fill the gap. What kills the conversation isn't incompleteness, it's vagueness dressed up as a finished brief.
NovaSupplier's project intake is built around exactly this list, tech pack, fabric and GSM, certifications, quantities broken down by colorway, target price, and timeline, so the request a Portuguese manufacturer receives is one they can actually quote on the first read. Start at novasupplier.com**.