Notes for owners · Sales management
How to quote a moulded part when the buyer has only a sample
A buyer sends a sample and asks for a rate. Read what the part tells you, ask what it fits and what must match, quote with assumptions, and get a drawing signed first.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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- What the sample tells you before you ask anything
- Three questions only the buyer can answer
- Quote firm, quote with assumptions, or wait
- Turn the sample into a drawing the buyer signs
- For example: chair glides for a furniture maker in Hyderabad
- When to say no to a sample-only job
- Your next sample on the bench
The courier envelope holds a scuffed plastic part and a note: "make same, quote rate for ten thousand". No drawing, no grade, no tolerance. Do not price it from its weight and a guess. Read what the sample tells you, then ask the buyer three things: what it fits onto, which features must match exactly, and what it goes through in use. Quote firm only when those are answered; otherwise write your assumptions into the quote. Once the buyer orders, have them sign a drawing before any steel is cut.
What the sample tells you before you ask anything
A moulded part carries its own history. Ten minutes at the bench with callipers, a scale and a lens tells you more than the buyer's note.
| Check | Where to look | What it changes in your quote |
|---|---|---|
| Material code | A moulded mark inside the part, such as >PP< or >PA6< | Resin price, shrinkage allowance, steel choice |
| Cavity number | A small digit near the gate or on an ejector mark | How many cavities the old tool had, a hint at volumes |
| Gate scar | The small mark where plastic entered | Tool layout, and where a mark is acceptable |
| Parting line and undercuts | The thin seam, and any hook or hole across it | Whether the tool needs sliders or side cores |
| Ejector marks | Round marks on one face | Which face the buyer treats as hidden |
| Wall thickness and weight | Callipers and a scale | Cycle time and resin per piece |
| Surface | Texture, gloss, printing | Texture etching or printing as extra lines |
| Condition | Warping, worn edges or threads, sink marks | Whether the sample's sizes can be trusted |
The last row matters most. A part that has spent years pressed into a tube, screwed onto a neck or baked in sunlight is no longer the size it was moulded at.
Three questions only the buyer can answer
Send these in your first reply, before any rate:
- What does this part fit onto, and can you send that part, or a few of them?
- Which features must match exactly, and which may change? Think of the fit, the look and the colour.
- What does it go through in use: load, heat, sunlight, oil or water?
The first decides the job. A sample shows one part. The mating part shows the size that actually has to work. For load-bearing or heat-exposed parts, the use questions in engineering plastics enquiries: the questions that qualify the buyer go further.
A buyer who will not answer any of the three is collecting rates. Send one budgetary figure and move on.
Quote firm, quote with assumptions, or wait
Quote a firm price when three things are in hand. The material, from the moulded mark or the buyer's written word. The mating part, or its sizes. And the features that must match, agreed in writing.
Quote with assumptions when one of them is missing. Put a box at the top of the quotation:
This price assumes: polypropylene, read from the mark on the sample; sizes taken from one sample; colour matched to the sample by eye. If the mating part or the buyer's use differs, tool changes are charged. The price is firm once the drawing is signed.
Wait, and say why, when the sample is broken or worn at the feature that matters and the buyer cannot send the part it fits onto. A tool built to a worn thread is wrong before it is made.
Turn the sample into a drawing the buyer signs
Once the job is awarded, measure several samples if the buyer has them, not one. Draw the part. Mark the dimensions that must hold, the material, the colour reference and the hidden face. Send the drawing for their signature, and charge for it on its own line, adjusted against the tool if the buyer goes ahead.
From then on, the signed drawing is the reference, and the old sample is kept for appearance only. If the tool is their, settle ownership and tool life in the same quotation, as set out in what a buyer asks before giving a moulding job. Moulders across plastic manufacturing who work this way argue about drawings, which can be settled, instead of samples, which cannot.
For example: chair glides for a furniture maker in Hyderabad
Imagine a moulder in IDA Bollaram, Hyderabad, sent a black chair glide by a furniture maker in the city whose earlier supplier had shut down. The maker builds steel-tube chairs for schools and canteens.
The moulder weighed the glide, took it for polypropylene from its feel, measured its outer diameter and built a two-cavity tool. The first lot was loose in the new tubes, and several glides cracked under load in the buyer's own test. The buyer refused the lot.
Under the dust on the inner face, the old glide carried a nylon mark. It had also been squeezed inside a tube for years and had shrunk at the collar. The moulder asked for five tubes from the maker's current stock and three unused glides from its store. The moulder drew the glide with the tube's inner diameter as the critical size, in nylon, and had the drawing signed. The tool was corrected at the moulder's own cost. Every sample-only enquiry now goes through the bench check and the three questions before a rate goes out. Quotes that carry assumptions need a follow-up too, or they go quiet.
When to say no to a sample-only job
Decline when the part looks like another company's protected product and the buyer cannot show they have the right to have it made. Decline, too, when the quantity is a few hundred pieces and the buyer expects a new tool to cost nothing. And step back from parts where a failure could hurt someone, such as a load-bearing safety component, unless the buyer's engineer gives you a specification and takes responsibility for it. Rules for such parts differ by product and change, so their adviser has to settle them.
Your next sample on the bench
Print the bench check and tape it beside the callipers. Put the three questions into your standard first reply, ahead of any rate. If you would like the intake, the assumption box and the follow-up built into your quoting, tell us what you need.
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