The Luggage Tech Pack: The Fields That Decide Your Quote
A factory cannot quote from a photograph. It can guess, and the guess will be wrong in the direction that protects the factory rather than you.
A tech pack fixes that. It does not have to be CAD and it does not have to be beautiful. A dimensioned sketch and a table of decisions is enough.
What buyers actually ask us
We exported every inquiry this site has received, 8,079 submissions across fifteen forms, and cleaned it down to 2,424 substantive messages. Then we classified what each one was asking about. It is the closest thing we have to a map of what a brand does not know yet when it first writes to a factory.
| What the message was about | Share of all 2,424 | Share of the last 379 |
|---|---|---|
| Private label and customization | 10.6% | 19.0% |
| Material and grade | 10.1% | 20.3% |
| Price and quotation | 6.8% | 11.6% |
| Catalog and documents | 5.9% | 10.0% |
| Certification and testing | 4.4% | 5.3% |
| Sampling | 4.2% | 12.1% |
| Minimum order quantity | 3.5% | 7.9% |
| Lead time | 2.5% | 4.7% |
| Shipping and duty | 2.3% | 3.7% |
| Tooling | 1.1% | 1.6% |
Source: our own form submissions, exported 2026-08-16, anonymized. The right hand column is the most recent six months.
Compare the two columns. Material and grade doubled. Sampling almost tripled. These are not new questions. They are the questions a brand starts asking once it has stopped browsing and started specifying, and they are the same list a quote needs answered before a number exists.
The fields a quote actually needs
Nine groups. Most of a tech pack is filling these in.
Geometry. Outside dimensions for each size in the range, height by width by depth, in millimeters. State whether the number includes wheels and the handle housing, because a 55 cm (21.7 in) shell and a 55 cm case are two different products and airline limits are measured on the second one.
Material and wall. Not aluminum. The grade, the sheet thickness, and whether you mean an aluminum frame case with plastic shells and an extruded frame, or a full aluminum case with an aluminum sheet shell. Those two are built on different lines, and what that does to your tooling bill and your unit cost is set out in aluminum frame case vs full aluminum case.
Finish. The process, not the look. Anodized, powder coated, brushed, and PVD are four different operations with four different cost bases and four different repair behaviors.
Hardware. Lock, wheels, telescopic handle, side and top grabs, latches. Give the part or give the brand and model you want matched. A lock is not a specification.
Interior. Lining material, divider layout, compression straps, pockets, whether the interior is fixed or removable. State the lining for engineering reasons rather than for a label, because the US labeling rules that would have forced a fiber content statement exclude luggage.
Branding. Where the mark goes, how it is applied, and what it is applied to. Laser on aluminum, embossing on lining, and a molded plate are decided at different stages of the build.
Packaging. Polybag, inner carton, master carton, and whether the case ships one to a carton. This changes the freight number more than most brands expect.
Quantity and destination. Quantity per size and per color, and the country. Destination is not a shipping detail. It decides which marking and documentation rules apply.
Timing. The date the goods have to be in the warehouse, not the date you want to place the order.
Three fields that force a range instead of a number
Leave any of these open and a careful factory quotes a range. Leave all three open and the range stops being useful. The shorter version of what to send, and why a published price list cannot exist, is in why a luggage factory cannot send you a price list.
Material named without a thickness. The same shell in a heavier sheet is a different part with different tooling behavior and a different weight, and weight is what the freight is charged on.
Finish named by look. Matte black is not a process. It is reachable by anodizing and by powder coat, and the two do not age the same way or repair the same way.
Hardware named by function. TSA approved lock covers a wide spread of parts. So does spinner wheel. Naming the function tells the factory nothing about the bill of materials.
What a tech pack does not have to be
It does not have to be a 3D model. A hand sketch with dimensions written on it, photographed and sent as an image, is a working input.
It does not have to be complete on the first pass. A tech pack with six of the nine groups filled in gets a tighter quote than a photograph with a target price attached.
It does not have to commit you. Nothing in a tech pack stops you changing a decision. It just makes the cost of that change visible before it is expensive.
What we do and what we do not
We work from drawings and specs, and we will send back the list of fields that are missing rather than filling them in silently with the cheapest option. That list is usually short and it is usually the same three fields.
Our minimum is 300 units per design, and smaller test batches are negotiable rather than refused. Sampling runs 7 to 15 days. Bulk is 45 days from a confirmed sample. Materials we run are aluminum, aluminum magnesium, titanium, PP, PC, and ABS.
We do not send a price list. There is no honest number that survives being separated from the nine groups above, and a factory that gives you one before it has them is quoting a product it has chosen rather than the one you asked for.
We also do not quote against a photograph of another brand’s case without saying which parts of it we would have to change. Copying a case exactly is a different conversation and usually a legal one.
Once the fields are filled in, the next question is the calendar. That is where the calendar actually goes.
Two fields in the list above have their own articles. Branding is how a logo actually gets onto a metal shell, and the commercial half is which payment structure puts the risk where.
Two fields above carry their own numbers. Tooling is what a tooling number actually buys, and the term nobody writes down is who owns the tooling once it is paid for.
One field on that list has its own document. Inspection standard means what a defect list has to fix.
Destination decides the marking. For the EU that is who has to be responsible for it inside the EU.
Frequently asked questions
What information or files do you need to begin quoting?
Outside dimensions per size, material and sheet thickness, finish process, the hardware list, interior layout, branding method and placement, packaging, quantity per size and color, destination country, and your required warehouse date. A dimensioned sketch covers most of it.
Can you just send a catalog and a price list?
We can send a catalog. A price list is the part that does not work, because unit cost moves with material, thickness, finish, hardware, and quantity, and a list has to fix all five to print a number.
Do I need a designer to produce a tech pack?
No. Most of the fields are decisions rather than drawings. A sketch with dimensions and a table of choices is enough to get a real quote, and it is enough to compare two factories against each other on the same basis.
Written by James
James works at aluvox.com in Houjie, Dongguan. The inquiry figures in this article come from the company’s own form records, pulled in August 2026.
