The lowest FOB number on your desk is usually the most expensive quote you will ever accept. Chinese furniture factories quote from the same material markets and the same labor pool, so when two quotes for one product sit 30% apart, the cheap one is not a bargain, it is a different product wearing the same name. The fix is mechanical: fix the specification, normalize the incoterm, and read the unit economics before you compare the numbers.

We review quotations every week at Riwick, and the pattern is consistent. A furniture quote is valid for 15-30 days, material and freight move in that window, and a spec change costs you 7-14 days for a revised price. Compare quotes on the same day, for the same spec, at the same incoterm, or the exercise is theater.

Why Raw FOB Numbers Lie

Quote comparison fails for four reasons, and none of them is the price. The first is the incoterm: one factory quotes FOB Nansha, another quotes FOB Shekou, and a third quotes CIF Hamburg. Those are three different cost universes, and the CIF number includes ocean freight and insurance that the FOB numbers do not. The second is the spec: “dining chair” means nothing to a factory, while “beech frame, 1.5-inch foam, 100,000-cycle fabric” means a precise cost stack.

The third reason is packaging. A knockdown chair packs flat and loads 68 cubic meters into a 40HQ, while an assembled chair of the same design burns the same space on half the units. Freight per unit swings 30-50% between the two, and the quote rarely says which you are buying. The fourth reason is payment timing. If one factory quotes with the balance due before inspection and another after, the risk is priced into the number.

One rule of thumb from our quotation reviews: when the same spec produces bids more than 30% apart, the low bidder is quoting a different material, a thinner finish, or a smaller factory margin that will show up later. Treat a 30% gap as a spec problem, not a price problem.

Fix the Specification Before You Ask

A factory cannot quote what you have not defined, and it will not ask you to clarify. It will quote the cheapest interpretation of your two-line inquiry and call it a day. The fix is a written spec sheet with the fields that drive cost: dimensions and tolerance, wood species or board type, foam density and ILD, fabric or leather grade with abrasion cycles, finish type and thickness, hardware brand and finish, assembly type, packaging, and carton size.

Upholstery is where most of the money hides. Specify the fabric’s abrasion rating in cycles, because 30,000-cycle fabric and 100,000-cycle fabric come from different price tiers. Specify foam density, because a 1.5-inch layer at 25 kg/m3 and one at 35 kg/m3 change the seat feel and the quote. Specify the frame species, because rubberwood, beech and poplar are different cost stacks. The way Chinese furniture factories price products is cost-plus, so every line you fix is a line the factory cannot quietly downgrade.

Once the spec is frozen, change control starts. In custom runs, a spec change after quoting means 7-14 days for a revised quote and often a new sample round. Get the spec approved by everyone on your side before it reaches the factories, and you save the delay.

Normalize the Incoterm First

Incoterms 2020, published by the International Chamber of Commerce, define who pays and who carries risk at each stage. The ICC Incoterms 2020 rules are the reference text, and the four terms you will see in furniture quotes behave like this.

Term	Seller covers	Buyer covers	Compare it with
EXW	Goods at factory gate	Trucking, export, freight, duty	Same term only
FOB	Export packing, trucking, clearance	Ocean freight, insurance, duty	Same port, same term
CIF	Freight and insurance to destination port	Import duty, inland delivery	Same destination port
DDP	Everything to your door	Nothing until delivery	Same door address

Within FOB, the port matters. Foshan factories quote from Pearl River Delta ports such as Nansha, Shekou and Yantian, and the named port changes inland trucking by roughly $100-$300 per 40HQ. A quote at the cheaper port is not a factory discount, it is a different pickup point. Compare FOB against FOB at the same port, and convert every other term to a landed cost per unit before ranking.

Build a Quote Comparison Table

Stop comparing quotes in email threads. One table, one row per factory, and columns for the numbers that actually differ. A working template looks like this: factory, FOB port, unit price, MOQ, tooling, packaging type, payment terms, lead time, quote validity, and the landed cost per unit you calculate from the freight estimate.

Row	Factory A	Factory B	Factory C
Term quoted	FOB Nansha	FOB Shekou	CIF Hamburg
Unit price	$42.00	$39.50	$61.00
MOQ	100	200	50
Tooling	$1,200	None	None
Payment	30/70 after inspection	30/70 before shipment	50/50
Lead time	45 days	60 days	40 days

The example above is illustrative, but it shows the trap: Factory B looks cheapest on the unit price and loses once you add freight to Hamburg, tooling amortization and the balance-before-inspection risk. The furniture import cost calculator on this site runs this exact math, and the 12 line items beyond the factory price tell you which costs the quote never mentions.

Read the Unit Economics Behind the Price

Once the table is filled, check the cost structure. Factory pricing is cost-plus: materials run roughly 45-55% of the price, labor 15-20%, overhead 10-15%, and the factory margin 8-15%. Ask each factory for that split on your product. A factory that refuses is not protecting a trade secret, it is protecting a margin that the split would expose.

Then check the tiers. A factory quoting one price with no volume break is quoting its MOQ price. The same factory usually drops 5-10% per unit at 200 pieces and 10-15% at 500, so ask for the tier table before you compare single numbers. Watch the MOQ column too: the factory with the low MOQ often has the high unit price, because short runs absorb setup costs.

If you are buying through a channel, know what the channel adds. Trading companies reselling factory goods mark up 15-30%, which is legitimate when they add QC and logistics and silent when they do not. A direct factory quote with your own inspection plan beats a trading company quote with a handshake. The comparison of FOB versus CIF furniture import covers the freight side of this math in more detail.

A US retailer removed that channel layer entirely, and the resulting numbers are in our case study of a retailer saving 18 percent on factory-direct sourcing.

Red Flags That Hide in Cheap Quotes

A quote below the market is a signal to dig, not to celebrate. The first red flag is a material swap: the price assumes MDF where you specified plywood, or 25 kg/m3 foam where you specified 35. Ask for the material list in the quote, not the brochure. The second is the sample mismatch: the sample you approved was built by hand, and production uses a cheaper subframe or a thinner finish. Confirm the production spec against the sample in writing.

The third red flag is the split quote. The factory quotes FOB at a great number and your freight forwarder quotes ocean freight separately, so the landed cost is never written down anywhere. Force one landed-cost number per factory. The fourth is payment pressure: a factory demanding 50% or more before inspection is pricing in the risk that you will reject the batch. The standard Foshan pattern is 30% deposit and 70% balance, and the balance should be payable after inspection, not before.

The fifth red flag is a short validity. A 7-day quote on a product that takes 45 days to build is a price you cannot plan against. Validities of 15-30 days are the norm; anything shorter means the factory expects its costs to move. US buyers can also check the US Commercial Service China market entry guide for the country-level contracting and dispute context around these deals.

Before any of this matters, the factory behind the quote has to be real. A quote is easy to send; a workshop with the machines, the material stock and the QC records is expensive to fake. Check the business license against the factory address, ask for video of the production line, and run the supplier through a verification checklist before you treat the number as an option. Our guide to verifying furniture factories in China walks through the checks that take an hour and eliminate most phantom quotes.

A Seven-Step Process for Quote Comparison

Step one is the frozen spec sheet, circulated to every factory with the same wording and the same deadline. Step two is the incoterm declaration: tell every factory to quote FOB at the same port, and collect CIF or DDP only as a second row.

Step three is the tier table: ask for pricing at the MOQ, at 200 and at 500 units before you compare. Step four is the cost split: request the material, labor, overhead and margin breakdown. Step five is the landed cost: run every quote through a calculator with freight, insurance, duty, port charges and a buffer, because hidden costs in China furniture sourcing always add up.

Step six is the sample test: order the sample from the leading quote, weigh it, measure it, and compare it against the spec sheet, not against the photo. Step seven is the written summary: one page that states the recommended factory, the landed cost per unit, the payment terms and the inspection plan. If you want this process run by a team that reviews Foshan quotes daily, our services and pricing page shows what a sourcing agent actually checks before you pay the deposit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Fix the spec, freeze the incoterm, fill one comparison table, and read the cost split behind every number. The quote that survives that process is the one to sample, and the cheap FOB number that cannot survive it was never a quote at all.

Send us your spec sheet and we will run the comparison with three or four Foshan factories, including the landed-cost math and the inspection plan, before you commit a deposit.