Bag Manufacturing Glossary: Terms Every Brand Should Know

A tech pack is the technical document that specifies how a bag should be made. It contains construction details, measurements with tolerances, a bill of materials, hardware specifications, finishing instructions and branding placement. It travels from the brand to the pattern cutter, the sampling room and the inspection team, so it has to be readable by people who never meet the designer. A precise tech pack reduces sampling rounds because it removes the interpretation a production floor would otherwise have to invent.

MOQ stands for minimum order quantity, the smallest volume a production floor will accept for a given style and colourway. Five hundred pieces is a common starting point because cutting, setting up lines and sourcing materials all carry fixed costs that must be spread across a run. Below that threshold, setup time and material minimums relative to output rise sharply. Small-batch pilot runs are often available by arrangement for brands that want to test a style before committing to a full production quantity.

Full-grain leather retains the original outer surface of the hide, so the natural grain is intact and the fibre structure is at its strongest. Top-grain has the outermost layer lightly removed to reduce surface defects before finishing, which gives a more uniform appearance at some cost to fibre integrity. Both are genuine leather, and the choice depends on whether the design prioritises durability and character or a consistent, corrected surface across every piece.

Temper describes the softness or firmness of a leather and how it behaves when folded or handled. A soft temper drapes and slouches, suiting unstructured silhouettes, while a firm temper holds shape and suits structured bags. Temper affects pattern allowances, seam construction and how much reinforcement a panel needs. Because two hides of the same thickness can differ in temper, it should be specified alongside thickness rather than assumed from the grade alone.

AQL stands for acceptable quality limit, the maximum defect level a sampling plan will tolerate for a given lot size. AQL 2.5 means that for every hundred units inspected under the agreed plan, a defined small number of defects is acceptable while exceeding it means the lot is rejected. It is normally applied under ISO 2859-1 with single sampling at general inspection level II. Agreeing the AQL in writing before production removes the ambiguity that otherwise surfaces during a shipment dispute.

Skiving is the process of reducing leather thickness along an edge so that a folded or overlapped seam sits flat instead of bulging. It is done on a specialised machine and requires skill, because removing too much material weakens the edge while removing too little leaves a visible lump. Skiving affects how clean a bag looks at its edges and how evenly it wears. In a specification, it should be named per zone rather than described generally as neat finishing.

Yield is the proportion of usable material obtained from a hide or roll after accounting for natural defects, edges and offcuts. Consumption is the average amount of material a single bag requires, expressed as an area and including the waste allowance. Yield determines how many bags a hide can produce, while consumption determines how much leather to buy for a run. Both are primary cost drivers, which is why a quoted price depends as much on hide quality and nesting as on leather price per square metre.

These are incoterms that define where cost and risk transfer between buyer and seller. FOB, or free on board, means responsibility passes once the goods are loaded at the origin port, so the buyer arranges and pays for onward freight. CIF means the seller also covers cost, insurance and freight to the destination port. DDP means the seller delivers to the buyer's named address with duties paid. Comparing quotations only makes sense when the incoterm is the same.

A major defect is a fault likely to affect function, saleability or the customer's perception of quality, such as a broken stitch run, a misaligned panel, a non-functioning zip or visible hardware damage. Minor defects cover cosmetic or tolerance variations that do not affect function. Critical defects involve safety or legal non-compliance and are usually accepted at zero. The classification belongs in the written standard, because the same fault can be major in one market and minor in another.

A first-off approval is the sign-off of the very first piece produced at the start of a run or a shift. It is checked against the approved sample and the specification, then retained as the physical reference for the rest of the order. The practice matters because small drifts, in thread tension or panel alignment, appear as production gets underway. Having a signed and dated first-off piece gives the inspection process a concrete benchmark and gives the buyer a record of what was agreed.

A sample is made to test the design and specification, often during several revision rounds before anything is approved. A pre-production sample is made after the specification is frozen, using the actual bulk materials, and represents exactly what the production floor intends to ship. The second is the more reliable predictor of the order, because it reflects the real material batch and the real construction. Approving a design sample and skipping the pre-production stage is a common cause of bulk inconsistency.

Vegetable-tanned leather is tanned using plant-derived agents rather than chromium salts, a slower process that produces a firmer, more structured material with a characteristic patina as it ages. In production it behaves differently from chrome-tanned leather: it can be more sensitive to moisture, it burnishes beautifully at the edges, and it often takes colour unevenly by design rather than by fault. It is specified where a natural, evolving surface is the point of the product rather than a uniform finish.

Consumption is the average leather area required per finished piece, usually measured in square feet or square decimetres, and it includes a waste allowance for defects and offcuts. It is calculated from the total area of all pattern pieces for the style, divided by the nesting efficiency achievable on that material. Higher-consumption styles cost more to make at the same hide price, which is why a redesign that reduces the number of panels or improves nesting can lower unit cost without changing the leather itself.

They usually come from different sides of the same trade. Brands encounter materials through marketing and retail, where words such as premium or luxury are used as positioning, while production floors describe measurable properties such as grade, temper, thickness and finish. The two vocabularies overlap without matching. The practical fix is to write specifications in the measurable register and keep the marketing language for the customer-facing side of the business, so that neither set of words is asked to do the other's job.