After the fair, buyers ask about lead time before price

What changed at the booth

For several seasons the first question at a booth was price at a given quantity. This round it was different: buyers opened with “when can you ship”, then asked for the price at two or three delivery points. A supplier who could only answer one date lost the conversation, even when the number was lower.

Why the question moved

Two reasons kept coming up. First, buyers who placed orders in the first half of the year are still waiting on goods, and the delay cost more than the unit price difference would have saved. Second, retail calendars are fixed: a container that arrives three weeks late misses the season entirely, and the discount does not recover it.

What factories answered differently

The factories that handled this well did not promise a shorter lead time. They gave a schedule: material in by a date, first article by a date, mass production window, and the cut-off after which the date moves. That answer is checkable, and buyers wrote it down.

What to do before you send the next RFQ

Ask for the schedule in four dates rather than one, and ask which of them is at risk. If a supplier cannot name the risk, the date is a guess. That single question separates the quotations worth comparing from the ones that are only numbers.