Category: Sourcing Guides

Two quotations for what looks like the same bag can differ by thirty percent, and nine times out of ten the print method is the reason. It sets your setup cost, your realistic minimum order, how many colours you can use, how sharp the artwork will look on fabric, and how many days the job spends on the floor before it ships.

This guide walks through the five methods actually used on non-woven, canvas, paper and poly bags, what each one is good at, and how to choose without paying for capability you do not need.

The short version

If you are in a hurry: silk-screen for one to three solid colours at any volume, offset lamination for photographic full-colour work, heat transfer for small runs and complex artwork, digital for samples and very short runs, flexographic for poly mailers and film. The rest of this article explains why.

Silk-screen printing

A mesh screen is prepared for each colour in your design, ink is pushed through it onto the fabric, and the bag passes to a drying stage before the next colour is applied. It is the oldest method in the trade and still the most widely used on non-woven and canvas.

What it does well. Solid, opaque, saturated colour. A screen-printed logo on 80 gsm non-woven has a density that digital methods struggle to match, and it holds up to abrasion. Because the ink sits on the surface rather than soaking in, light colours print cleanly on dark fabric.

Where it stops. Every colour needs its own screen, its own pass and its own registration setup. One or two colours is economical; six colours is not. Fine gradients, drop shadows and photographic images cannot be reproduced — they have to be redrawn as flat spot colours or the job moves to a different method.

Cost structure. A one-off screen charge per colour, then a low per-unit running cost. This is why silk-screen gets cheaper very quickly as volume rises: the setup is amortised across the run. On a small order the screen charge can be a visible share of the total; on a large one it disappears into the rounding.

Choose it when your artwork is a logo or wordmark in one to three flat colours, and you want the lowest unit price at volume.

Heat transfer printing

Artwork is printed onto a carrier film first, then pressed onto the finished bag with heat and pressure. Because the image is created off the bag, the complexity of the artwork barely affects the cost.

What it does well. Full colour, gradients, small text and photographic detail on a bag that would be awkward to screen-print. There is no per-colour setup, so a fourteen-colour illustration costs the same to transfer as a two-colour one. It also handles curved and awkward panels — cooler bags, shoe bags, drawstring bags — where a flat screen bed is difficult.

Where it stops. The transfer sits as a film patch on the fabric. On large coverage areas you can see and feel the edge of the patch, and the hand-feel is plasticky compared with screen ink. Per-unit cost is higher than screen printing and does not fall as sharply with volume, because each bag still needs its own press cycle.

Cost structure. Low or no setup, higher and flatter per-unit cost. The economics are the mirror image of silk-screen: better on short runs, worse on long ones. Somewhere in the middle the two curves cross, and where they cross depends on your colour count and image size.

Choose it when the artwork is complex, the run is short, or the print area is small and detailed.

Offset lamination (gravure-printed film)

This is the method behind almost every glossy, photographic non-woven bag you have seen in a shopping centre. The image is not printed on the fabric at all — it is printed onto a BOPP film in full CMYK, and that film is then laminated onto the non-woven sheet before the bag is cut and made.

What it does well. Genuine photographic reproduction, edge-to-edge, with a glossy or matte finish and a water-resistant surface as a by-product. Colour consistency across a large run is excellent because the film is printed on a web press rather than bag by bag. See the results in the laminated non-woven range.

Where it stops. The film requires printing cylinders, and cylinders are a real tooling cost. That cost is fixed regardless of how many bags you make, which puts a hard floor under the order size where the method makes sense. It also adds a lamination step and its own curing time to the schedule.

Cost structure. Significant one-time tooling, then a moderate per-unit cost. On a large repeat programme the tooling is paid once and reused for every subsequent order, which is why brands running annual retail packaging keep coming back to it.

Choose it when you need full-colour photographic branding, a premium retail finish, or water resistance built into the surface.

Digital printing

Ink is jetted directly onto the substrate from a digital file, with no screens, plates or cylinders.

What it does well. Zero setup and no minimum imposed by tooling. Variable data — different names, codes or regional variants across a single run — costs nothing extra. It is the fastest route from an approved file to a physical sample you can hold.

Where it stops. On non-woven polypropylene, ink adhesion and colour density are the limiting factors; the fabric is not an ideal receiving surface and results vary with fabric weight and treatment. Per-unit cost stays flat as volume grows, so at scale it is the most expensive option by a wide margin. It is genuinely strong on paper and on coated substrates.

Cost structure. No setup, high and flat per-unit cost.

Choose it when you need pre-production samples, a pilot batch, personalised variants, or a very short run on paper.

Flexographic printing

A flexible relief plate transfers ink onto film as it runs through the press. This is the standard method for poly mailers, courier bags and plastic film generally.

What it does well. Fast, high-speed printing on polyethylene and similar films, at a very low cost per unit once running. Solid colours and line work reproduce cleanly.

Where it stops. Plates are required per colour, and the process suits flat spot colours rather than fine halftones. Practical colour counts on mailers stay low — most e-commerce brands print one or two.

Choose it when you are branding poly mailers, courier bags or film-based packaging.

Matching the method to the bag

Bag type	Usual first choice	Alternative
Non-woven shopping and tote bags	Silk-screen	Heat transfer for complex artwork
Laminated non-woven retail bags	Offset lamination	—
Non-woven cooler, shoe and drawstring bags	Heat transfer	Silk-screen on flat panels
Cotton canvas totes	Silk-screen	Heat transfer, embroidery
Kraft and art paper bags	Offset	Digital on short runs, foil and spot UV as finishing
Poly mailers and courier bags	Flexographic	—

What actually drives your print cost

Colour count. In screen and flexo printing, each colour is a separate setup and a separate pass. Reducing a four-colour logo to two often saves more than negotiating on the unit price ever will. In heat transfer, offset lamination and digital, colour count is close to free.

Coverage area. A logo on one face costs less than an edge-to-edge design across both faces and the gussets. Full-bleed coverage on non-woven also pushes you toward lamination, because screen ink over a very large area stiffens the fabric.

Number of faces. Printing front and back doubles the passes in screen printing. It is close to free in offset lamination, because the film is printed as a continuous web before the bag is made.

Colour matching requirements. A Pantone match on a specified fabric colour needs ink mixing and a proofing round. “Roughly this blue” is cheaper than “exactly PMS 2935 C”.

Finishing. Foil stamping, spot UV and embossing are separate operations with their own tooling, applied after printing. They are common on paper shopping bags and rare on non-woven.

Artwork you should send

Vector files — AI, EPS or a vector PDF — with fonts converted to outlines and spot colours specified as Pantone references. Vector artwork can be scaled to any bag size without loss and separates cleanly into printing colours.

If all you have is a JPG or PNG, send it anyway. What matters is effective resolution at final print size, not the pixel count in isolation: a 2000 pixel logo is generous at 80 mm wide and marginal at 300 mm. We check it and tell you plainly whether it will hold, or redraw it as vector for you.

Two details that are missed constantly. First, leave clearance between artwork and the seam, fold and gusset lines — the dieline we issue shows where those fall. Second, remember that non-woven fabric is a textured, slightly absorbent surface, not coated paper. Hairline rules under about 0.25 mm and very small reversed-out text tend to fill in.

Colour on fabric behaves differently

A Pantone reference is defined on coated paper. Printed on 80 gsm non-woven it will read slightly duller and warmer, because the fabric is matte and marginally absorbent. On a coloured fabric the substrate shifts it further — the same ink on white, grey and kraft-tone non-woven gives three visibly different results.

None of this is a defect, but it does mean a screen-based colour proof is worth requesting whenever the shade carries brand weight. Offset lamination is the exception: because the image is printed on white BOPP film before lamination, colour behaves much closer to a paper reference.

How print method affects your minimum order

There is no single site-wide minimum, and any supplier quoting you one before asking about your artwork is guessing. The floor is set by the economics of the method you choose.

Digital and heat transfer have little or no tooling, so the practical minimum is driven by the bag-making side rather than the printing. Silk-screen adds a screen charge per colour, which needs enough units underneath it to be worth doing. Offset lamination carries cylinder tooling and a lamination setup, so it has the highest floor of the five — and the best economics once you are above it.

What this means in practice: if the quantity you want sits below the sensible floor for photographic lamination, the answer is usually to change the method rather than to abandon the project. A two-colour screen print on a good fabric weight often looks better than a compromised full-colour job anyway. Your specific minimum and the quantity breaks where unit price steps down are stated in your quotation.

How print method affects lead time

Screen and flexo printing need plate or screen preparation before the line starts. Offset lamination needs cylinder engraving, which is the longest tooling step of the five, plus a lamination and curing stage after printing. Heat transfer needs the carrier film produced first. Digital needs nothing.

In our experience, though, tooling is rarely the critical path. The largest block of time on a delayed order is almost always the artwork approval loop — a proof waiting for a decision, or a second sampling round triggered by a change that could have been caught at dieline stage. The five-stage order process exists precisely to make those decision points explicit.

Five mistakes worth avoiding

Specifying full colour when two would do. Photographic print is not automatically more premium. A crisp two-colour screen print on 100 gsm fabric reads as more considered than a muddy full-colour job on 70 gsm.

Sending a low-resolution logo pulled from a website. Screen-grab artwork at 72 dpi will not enlarge. Ask your designer for the original vector file before you request quotes.

Ignoring the fabric colour. Ink is semi-transparent. A navy logo on a grey bag is not the same navy as on a white bag, and pale inks on dark fabric need an underbase — which is an extra colour and an extra pass.

Designing to the bag edge without a dieline. Artwork that runs into the seam or the fold gets distorted or trimmed. Request the dieline first and design onto it.

Approving a digital proof when the colour matters. A PDF on your monitor is not a colour contract. If the shade is critical, ask for a physical printed sample on the actual fabric.

Frequently asked questions

Which print method is cheapest?

At volume, silk-screen for one or two colours on fabric and flexographic on film. On short runs, heat transfer or digital, because they carry no tooling to amortise. “Cheapest” always depends on where your quantity sits relative to the setup cost.

Can I print a photograph on a non-woven bag?

Yes, through offset lamination — the image is printed on BOPP film and laminated to the fabric. Direct photographic printing onto raw non-woven does not produce a result worth paying for.

Do you charge for screens, plates or cylinders?

Where the method requires them, yes, and the charge is itemised in the quotation rather than buried in the unit price. Tooling is normally kept for repeat orders on the same artwork, so a second run does not pay it again.

Can you match a Pantone colour exactly?

We match to a Pantone reference and tell you in advance where the fabric will shift it. On coated film via lamination the match is very close; on raw non-woven expect a slightly duller, warmer rendition. Where the shade is brand-critical, we make a physical colour proof on your fabric before production.

How many colours can I print?

Silk-screen and flexo are practical up to about four colours before the economics turn against you. Heat transfer, offset lamination and digital have no meaningful colour limit.

Can I print on both sides?

Yes, on every method. In screen printing it roughly doubles the print operation; in offset lamination it costs very little extra because the film web is printed before the bag is assembled.

What if my artwork is not ready?

Send what you have. We can quote against a described print method and coverage area, then finalise once artwork arrives. Getting an indicative price early is usually more useful than waiting for a perfect file.

Next step

Tell us the bag, the artwork and the quantity range you are working to, and we will come back with the method we would recommend, what it costs to set up and what it costs per unit. Request a quote, or read the GSM guide if you have not settled on a fabric weight yet.

Sourcing custom bags looks simple until the first shipment arrives. The bags are a slightly different shade, the handles are stitched narrower than the sample, the fabric feels thinner than what you approved, and the supplier’s answer is that this is normal production variation. At that point you discover what your due diligence was actually worth.

This is a guide to doing that due diligence before the money moves. It is written by a supplier, which you should factor in — but everything below is checkable, and most of it is what a competent buyer would work out after two or three painful orders.

Start by being honest about what you are buying

There are three kinds of supplier in this market and each has a legitimate place.

A direct factory owns machines and staff, and is genuinely good at the narrow set of products those machines make. Ask a non-woven bag factory for canvas totes and paper bags and it will quietly subcontract them, usually without telling you.

A trading company owns no production and buys from whoever is cheapest that month. The good ones add real value in communication, quality management and consolidation. The bad ones add a margin and a layer of distance between you and the person who can actually fix a problem.

A sourcing partner with a core production base sits in between: a primary factory relationship for the main product line, plus vetted partner factories for adjacent categories, with one team accountable for the whole order. That is our own model — non-woven production runs in an SGS-verified facility in Wenzhou, and canvas, paper and film products are produced through partner factories under the same specification and inspection discipline.

None of these is inherently better. What matters is that you know which one you are dealing with. A supplier who is evasive about it is telling you something.

Verify the company actually exists

This sounds obvious and it is routinely skipped.

Ask for the business licence. Every registered Chinese company has one, with a unified social credit code. The registered scope tells you whether the entity is licensed for manufacturing or only for trade, and the registered capital and establishment date tell you how long it has existed.

Ask for third-party verification. An SGS, TÜV, Bureau Veritas or Intertek supplier assessment means an inspector physically attended the site and confirmed what is there. This is materially stronger evidence than photographs, which can be anything. Ask for the report, not a badge on a website.

Do a live video walk of the floor. Not a pre-recorded film. Ask them to walk from the raw material store through cutting, printing, stitching and packing, in one unbroken take, and to show you the machine nameplates. It takes fifteen minutes and it settles the question.

Check that the addresses agree. Business licence address, the address on the quotation, the shipper on past bills of lading, and the location in the video should be consistent. Where they are not, there is an explanation, and you want to hear it.

The questions that separate a supplier from a broker

You do not need to be a manufacturing expert. You need to ask questions whose answers require operational knowledge.

What fabric weight would you recommend for this use case, and why? A supplier who answers “whatever you want” is not engaged with your problem. A good answer contains a trade-off — this weight for this load, at this cost, with this consequence for print.

Which print method are you quoting, and what is the setup cost? If tooling is not itemised, it is either buried in the unit price or has not been thought about. Both are bad.

What is your in-line inspection interval, and what happens when a check fails? The answer should describe a procedure, not an intention.

Can I nominate my own third-party inspector? Hesitation here is the single most informative reaction in the whole conversation.

What are the carton dimensions, pieces per carton and gross weight? A factory knows this without checking. It also changes your landed cost, so you want it early.

Read the quotation properly

A price on its own is not a quotation. What you need to see is what the price is a price for.

Material and fabric weight in gsm or ounces. Finished dimensions including gusset, stated as width by height by gusset. Handle type, length and attachment method. Print method, number of colours, print area and number of faces printed. Lamination if any. Packing method, pieces per polybag and per carton. Tooling and sampling charges as separate lines. The Incoterm the price is quoted on. The production lead time and what it is measured from.

When two quotations differ by a wide margin, almost always one of those lines differs too. The 20 gsm difference in fabric weight that nobody mentioned, or a single-face print quoted against a double-face requirement. Line them up side by side before you conclude that one supplier is expensive.

Be equally wary of the quote that is far below the others. Fabric weight, stitch density and handle reinforcement are the three places where cost is quietly removed, and all three are invisible in a photograph.

The sample stage is the real due diligence

Everything before the sample is conversation. The sample is evidence.

Order a pre-production sample made to your final specification, and when it arrives, measure it. Width, height, gusset, handle length, handle width. Weigh it and check the fabric weight against what was quoted — a gsm cutter and a precision scale is how the factory does it, but a kitchen scale and arithmetic will catch a serious discrepancy. Load it with the weight it is meant to carry and lift it by the handles thirty times. Look at the print under daylight, not office lighting, and against your Pantone reference.

Then keep it. The approved sample and the signed specification sheet together are the reference for the pre-shipment inspection, and they are what any dispute is settled against. A supplier who does not want a signed specification on file is a supplier planning to argue later.

Structure payment to reduce your exposure

Bank transfer with a deposit at order confirmation and the balance against shipping documents is the market standard, and it is reasonable for both sides — the factory has bought material and committed machine time, and you have not yet seen the goods.

What makes it safer is the sequencing. Release the balance against a pre-shipment inspection result, not against a promise. If the order is large enough to warrant it, appoint a third-party inspection company; the cost is small relative to a container of unusable bags. For a first order with a new supplier, consider splitting the volume — a smaller initial run tells you a great deal for a fraction of the exposure.

Red flags

A price far below every other quotation. Nobody in this industry has a secret cost advantage of thirty percent. Something has been removed from the specification.

Reluctance to allow inspection or a factory visit. There is no good reason for this.

No written specification sheet. If it is not written down, it is not agreed, and you will discover the difference at the port.

A published minimum order quantity that never changes regardless of product. An unprinted ultrasonic-welded bag and a full-colour laminated bag have entirely different economics. A single site-wide number means nobody has costed your job.

Certificates supplied as images. Ask for the certificate number and the issuing body, and check it against the issuer’s register.

Claims that cannot be evidenced. “Certified compostable”, “food safe”, “recycled content” and similar are testable statements. If a supplier makes them casually without asking which standard you need, they are not thinking about your regulatory exposure — and it is your brand on the bag, not theirs.

Communication that degrades after the deposit. Response time during production is the best available proxy for how a problem will be handled.

A checklist you can work through

Before requesting quotes: define the use case, the load the bag must carry, the quantity range, the destination, the date you need stock, and whether the artwork is ready.

Before choosing a supplier: business licence checked, third-party verification report seen, live video walk completed, addresses consistent, itemised quotation received, tooling and sampling costs stated separately, carton data provided.

Before paying a deposit: specification sheet signed by both sides, dieline issued and artwork approved on it, sampling scope and cost agreed, payment terms and Incoterm in writing, inspection arrangement agreed.

Before releasing the balance: pre-shipment inspection completed against the signed spec, AQL result reported, packing and carton marks verified, shipping documents checked.

Our own version of that sequence is set out stage by stage in how it works, and the inspection detail is in quality and compliance.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if a supplier is a factory or a trading company?

Check the business scope on the business licence, ask for a live unedited video walk of the production floor, and ask a specific process question — inspection intervals, machine count, stitch density. A trading company will answer in generalities because it is relaying, not operating. Note that being a trading company is not disqualifying; concealing it is.

What does an SGS verification actually prove?

That an independent inspector attended the site and verified the company’s existence, scale and stated capability at the time of assessment. It is not a quality guarantee for your order, and it does not replace inspecting your own goods. It does establish that the entity you are dealing with is real and operates where it says it does.

Should I always ask for the lowest price?

No, but you should always ask why a price is what it is. Compare specification lines rather than totals. The cheapest quote in a set is usually cheapest because something was removed, and fabric weight is the first thing to go.

Is a physical sample worth the cost?

Almost always. A pre-production sample costs a small fraction of a production run and is the only way to test the specification against reality before committing. It also gives you the reference object for the pre-shipment inspection.

What payment terms are normal?

A deposit at order confirmation with the balance against shipping documents is standard for bank transfer. Requests for full payment up front on a first order are unusual and worth questioning.

Can I send my own inspector?

You should be able to. Buyer-nominated third-party inspection is routine and a supplier who resists it is telling you something important about how the shipment will look.

Next step

If you want to test the process described here, start with a real enquiry rather than a general one: the bag, the load it carries, the quantity range and the destination. You will get an itemised specification and a price you can interrogate. Request a quote.