Your first email to a bed sheet supplier feels like a job interview where you do not know the job description. You ask about price. They answer with a number. You ask about lead time. They answer with a different number. Six months later you discover the “fabrikk” was a two-person trading desk, the price excluded packaging, and the lead time assumed fabric they did not have. Every one of those surprises was preventable with better questions asked earlier.
This is the interview script experienced buyers wish they had on day one: fifteen questions that reveal what a supplier can actually do, how they actually work, and whether they are a real factory or a middleman wearing a factory’s clothes. Ask them in order, listen for specifics over slogans, and you will sort your inbox into “serious partner” og “polite decline” within a week.
A quick note on perspective: Nantong integritetstekstil is the factory on the receiving end of these questions every day. Founded in 2007 i Nantong, Kina, med ca 30,000 square meters of production space and roughly 143 ansatte, we produce around 40,000 sengesett og 25,000 duvet sets a month. The questions below are the ones that make our merchandisers take an inquiry seriously — because they signal a buyer who will be easy to work with for years.
How to Use These Questions
Do not send all fifteen in your first email. That reads like an interrogation and gets you a copy-paste reply. I stedet, send five with your initial RFQ — questions 1, 4, 7, 11, og 13 below — and keep the rest for the video call or the second round. A supplier’s willingness to answer in specifics, with numbers and dates rather than adjectives, is itself the first test. “We have strong quality control” tells you nothing. “We run inline inspection at four stages to AQL 2.5 and hold ISO 9001 sertifisering” tells you everything.
Watch for the pattern across answers: real factories answer production questions fluently and pricing questions carefully; trading companies answer pricing questions fluently and production questions vaguely. That single pattern will carry you through most of the list.
De 15 Questions
1. Are you the factory, or a trading company?
Ask it directly. Then verify: request the business license showing manufacturing in the scope, a short video of the production floor with your product type running, and the factory address. A real factory answers in one email with evidence attached. A trading company answers with a paragraph about “partner factories” og “strict quality control over our supply chain.” There is nothing wrong with trading companies as a business model — but you deserve to know which one you are talking to, because it changes everything about accountability when something goes wrong.
2. What do you actually manufacture in-house?
Many “bedding factories” sew but do not weave, dye but do not finish, or assemble but outsource quilting. Ask which processes happen under their own roof and which are subcontracted. The answer maps your risk: every subcontracted step is a queue you cannot see and a quality checkpoint you cannot control. På vår fabrikk, kutting, sying, and finishing are in-house, which is why we can commit to schedules without calling three subcontractors first.
3. What is your monthly capacity, and how full are you right now?
Capacity is not a bragging number; it is a scheduling fact. A factory producing 40,000 bedding sets a month that is currently at ninety percent utilization has no room for your rush order, no matter what the sales email promised. Ask for the current loading and the earliest realistic production slot for your quantity. Factories that answer honestly are the ones whose ship dates you can trust.
4. What is your MOQ per construction, per color?
Minimums are where many first orders die. Ask separately for per-construction and per-color minimums, because a factory may accept 1,000 sets total but require 500 per colorway for dyeing efficiency. Also ask what happens below MOQ — some factories accept smaller runs at a surcharge, which can be perfect for a market test. Get the surcharge in writing before you need it.
5. Can you show me the same construction you would make for me?
Ask for a physical reference sample of a similar construction, not just photos. Hold it, wash it, pull the seams. Photos hide hand feel, vekt, and stitching density. A factory confident in its work sends samples quickly; a factory that stalls for weeks on a simple swatch request is previewing how your bulk order will go.
6. What certifications do you hold, and can I see them?
For bedding, the baseline is ISO 9001 for quality management and OEKO-TEX Standard 100 for material safety. Ask for the actual certificates with validity dates, not logos on a website. Then ask what the certifications change in practice — a factory that can describe its incoming-fabric testing or its chemical management in concrete terms is living the certificate; one that cannot is renting it.
7. How do you handle color approval?
Color disputes are the most common quality fight in bedding. Ask: do you send a lab dip before production, a bulk-approval swatch from the actual dye batch, eller begge deler? What light source do you match under? What happens if the bulk shade drifts? The right answer involves physical standards, numbered references, and a written approval step — not “our dyeing master has twenty years of experience.”
8. What is your real lead time, trinn for trinn?
Do not accept a single number. Ask for the breakdown: prøvetaking, greige readiness, farging, sying, undersøkelse, loading. The breakdown reveals whether the factory plans its production or improvises it. Compare the answer against the timeline in our lead-time guide — any factory quoting far below the industry norm for a dyed, finished product is skipping a step you will pay for later.
9. What is included in your quoted price — exactly?
FOB quotes should itemize: produkt, emballasje, etiketter, cartons, export documentation. Ask specifically whether packaging and private labels are included, because they are the two most common “surprise” add-ons. A quote that lists every component is a quote you can compare; a single lump number is a quote you cannot trust against a competitor’s.
10. What is your policy on target pricing?
This question separates factories that engineer cost from those that defend margin. Ask whether you can name a target price and get a make-or-no-make answer. Our standing policy, “Respekter målprisen,” works exactly this way: vis oss sitatene du har samlet, Nevn én totalpris, and we answer make or no-make with no haggling theater afterward. Factories willing to work this way are signaling confidence in their costing.
11. How do you inspect, and can I appoint my own inspector?
Ask for the inspection standard — AQL levels, which stages are checked inline, what triggers a hold. Then ask whether you may send a third-party inspector for pre-shipment inspection, and whether the factory has ever refused one. The only acceptable answer to the second question is an immediate yes. Resistance to independent inspection is the single brightest red flag in this entire list.
12. What happens when something goes wrong?
Every factory has a defect story; the honest ones will tell you one. Ask how they handled their last major quality claim: who paid, how fast, what changed in the process afterward. You are not looking for perfection — you are looking for a corrective-action system. A supplier that claims nothing has ever gone wrong is either very new or very dishonest, and neither is what you want.
13. What are your payment terms, and are they negotiable with history?
The industry standard for a first order is a deposit with the balance before shipment — commonly thirty percent down, seventy percent before loading. Ask whether terms improve as the relationship builds, and what specifically unlocks better terms: order count, annual volume, or time. Factories that grow with you are partners; factories with one rigid term sheet forever are vendors.
14. Can I visit, or at least video-tour the floor?
In the post-pandemic era, a live video walkthrough is the minimum. Ask to see the cutting room, the sewing lines running your product type, the packing area, and the warehouse. Watch for the details no brochure mentions: are the lines clean and organized, are materials labeled, does the manager know the workers by sight? You will learn more in a fifteen-minute unscripted walkthrough than in fifty emails.
15. Who will I actually work with day to day?
Ask to meet — even by video — the merchandiser who will handle your account, not just the salesperson who answered your inquiry. The salesperson’s job ends at the deposit; the merchandiser’s job runs through every sample, every approval, hver sending. Evaluate their English, their response speed, and whether they ask you good questions. A merchandiser who asks sharp questions about your specification in the first call will catch the problems that a passive one lets through to bulk production.
Spotting the Trading Company: Five Tells
With the answers in hand, here is how to read them. Først, the address test: a factory address in an industrial zone with a verifiable location on a map versus a trading company in a downtown office tower. Sekund, the depth test: ask a follow-up two levels deeper on any production answer — “which dyeing machines, what capacity per batch?” — and watch whether the fluency survives. Tredje, the sample test: factories pull a similar construction off the shelf in days; traders need a week because they are requesting it from someone else. Fjerde, the problem test: describe a hypothetical defect and ask who fixes it and how fast — factories describe a process, traders describe a negotiation. Fifth, the price-flexibility test: factories can re-engineer a construction to hit your target price; traders can only shave their margin, and only a little.
None of these tells is proof on its own. Sammen, they are close enough to act on.
A First Contact That Gets Answered
Put the questions to work with an opening email that respects the factory’s triage process. Keep it under two hundred words: who you are and where you sell, the product with three key specs, the quantity tier, the target ship date, and your target price. Attach a reference photo if you have one. Then add your five opening questions from the list above. That email gets answered in days, because the merchandiser can forward it to the costing desk without adding a single question of her own.
One more piece of hard-won advice: talk to three factories, not ten. Ten inquiries produce ten rounds of questions and no depth; three serious conversations produce one real partner. The goal of the first contact is not the lowest price — it is finding the factory you will still be emailing in five years.
Ofte stilte spørsmål
Should I ask for the factory’s business license?
Ja, and do it early. A legitimate manufacturer provides it without hesitation — it shows the registered scope including manufacturing, the legal address, and the establishment date. Reluctance to share basic registration documents is itself an answer, and not a good one.
Is it rude to ask a supplier directly if they are a trading company?
Not at all — it is standard due diligence, and professional suppliers hear it weekly. How they answer matters more than what they answer: a straightforward “we are a manufacturer, here is our license and a floor video” versus a defensive paragraph about supply chain partnerships tells you what you need to know.
How many samples should I request before committing?
One reference sample of a similar construction to judge capability, then one pre-production sample made exactly to your specification, which you approve in writing before bulk begins. More than two rounds of changes on the pre-production sample usually means the specification was unclear — fix the spec, not the sample.
What payment terms are normal for a first bedding order?
Thirty percent deposit with the balance paid before shipment is the industry norm for new relationships. Be wary of anyone demanding one hundred percent upfront, and equally wary of anyone offering generous credit on a first order — both are unusual enough to investigate before you celebrate.
Can a small buyer work directly with a factory?
Ja, if your volume meets the factory’s MOQ — typically one to three thousand sets per construction for bedding. Below that, a wholesaler or a trading company that consolidates small orders is the practical route. There is no shame in starting there; the questions in this guide still apply, and they will serve you when you graduate to factory direct.
What does “Respekter målprisen” mean in practice?
It means the pricing conversation starts from your number, not the factory’s. You share the quotes you have gathered elsewhere, name one all-in target price, and the factory answers make or no-make — then honors that price after the deal is closed. It is our standing policy at INTEGRITET TEKSTIL because it replaces weeks of haggling with one honest answer.
Ready to start the conversation with a factory that welcomes hard questions? Send your product specs, mengde, and target price to fabrikken vår — email Alex@integritytex.com or WhatsApp +86 151 5289 1159. The sharper your questions, the sharper our quote.
