How to read a magnet quotation, and what a missing line tells you

A quotation that is one price and one minimum is not a quotation. It is a number that will grow, and every place it grows is a conversation you did not have while you still had leverage.

A complete quotation for a magnet programme has more lines than people expect, and the missing ones are predictable. Here is what should be on it, and what it means when something is absent.

The lines that should be there

Piece price, stated per design and per process

Not one blended number for the range. Processes cost differently and designs within a process cost differently, and a blended price hides which design is carrying the others.

Tooling, as its own line, per design

Separate from the pieces. If tooling is buried in the piece price, two things follow: you cannot see what a reorder should cost once the tool exists, and you cannot tell what you have actually paid for. Both matter later.

The plate-change fee and its own minimum

What a new destination costs on an existing form, and the minimum quantity for that run. On a shared-form range this is the number that decides whether the range can grow, and it is the line most often missing. The reasoning is in one mould, many destinations.

Two different minimums

The per-design minimum and the per-order minimum. A single “MOQ” figure is ambiguous and the ambiguity always resolves in the direction you did not assume.

The reorder minimum on existing tooling

Usually lower than the first-order minimum. It decides whether you can restock mid-season, which is a different question from whether you can order at all.

Packaging, itemised

Card printing origination, the card itself, bagging labour, and the carton specification. Card origination scales with the number of destinations rather than the number of pieces, so on a multi-destination range it behaves quite unlike the rest of the quotation.

Sampling

Sample cost, how many revision rounds are included, and whether the cost is credited against a subsequent order. Crediting is common. It is not automatic, and it is not usually volunteered.

Testing and inspection

What testing exists already, what has to be commissioned, who commissions it and who pays. Same for inspection: which standard, which level, and who bears the cost of a re-inspection after a failure.

The incoterm and the named port

EXW and FOB numbers are not comparable to each other. If the term is absent, the price means nothing until you ask.

Payment terms and validity

What is due when, against what trigger — order placement, tooling completion, pre-shipment, documents. And the date the quotation expires, which on anything touching freight is shorter than people assume.

The timeline, stage by stage

Sampling, tooling, production, inspection, freight — separately. One lead-time number tells you nothing about which stage will slip.

What an absence usually means

No tooling line. Either it is buried in the piece price, in which case ask for it split out, or the intended form is a stock one that is not exclusive to you. Both are workable positions. Not knowing which one you are in is not.

No reorder minimum. Nobody has thought past your first order. This is the single most reliable signal about how the second one will go.

No packaging line. It will arrive later, and it will be larger than expected, because card origination per destination is not intuitive.

One blended piece price across a mixed range. You cannot tell which designs to cut if the range needs trimming, which is exactly the decision you will face after the first season.

A blanket exclusivity assurance with no scope. Discussed at length in what your mould actually means. Scope or it means nothing.

The placeholder test

A quotation with a stated “to be confirmed” against a line, with a reason and a date, is more trustworthy than one with a confident number that was invented to fill the space. The first tells you where the uncertainty is. The second moves the uncertainty to a place you cannot see it, which is usually the middle of your first production run.

Ask for the whole structure even where the values are not final yet. A supplier who can show you the shape of the quotation before they can fill every number in it is showing you how they work.

Send the designs, destinations and the market you sell into, and the quotation comes back in this structure — with anything still open marked as open rather than guessed.