per unit at 1,000 units — goods, agent fee, freight, US import fees and delivery. Duty is not included; see below.
Basis: Aggregated from 14 current wholesale listings in this category, costed with our standard import model. volume and weight assume a typical export carton for this category, not one supplier's packing list — 42 × 38 × 30 cm, 100 per carton, 15.5 kg gross, giving 0.00048 CBM and 0.16 kg per unit; your own carton will move the freight line. duty excluded, because the rate depends on how your product classifies — the table below shows what any rate adds. figures as of 10 October 2026. individual figures are not attributable to any one supplier.
What duty adds
We do not publish a single duty rate for this category, because classification depends on the product's construction and materials rather than on what it is called. Rather than print a number that would be wrong for some readers, here is what any given rate does to the figures above.
| Duty rate | Landed per unit | Versus no duty |
|---|---|---|
| No duty | $1.64 | — |
| 5% | $1.70 | +4.1% |
| 12% | $1.80 | +9.8% |
| 25% | $1.97 | +20.4% |
| 37% | $2.13 | +30.1% |
Establishing your own rate is your responsibility as importer rather than your supplier's — our guide to classification sets out how, including requesting a binding ruling if you intend to import repeatedly.
A cotton tote is one of the easiest things to import from China and one of the easiest to get quoted badly. Two bags that look identical in a photograph can differ in price by a factor of three, and the entire difference sits in two specifications most buyers never state: the weight of the fabric and how the artwork is applied.
Where the money goes
Cotton is a commodity, so the fabric cost tracks weight almost linearly. A heavier canvas is not a marginally more expensive bag; it is a substantially more expensive bag, and it is the correct choice for some uses and pure waste for others.
Printing behaves completely differently. Screen printing has a setup charge per colour that does not care how many bags you order, so it is expensive at low volume and very cheap at high volume. Digital printing has almost no setup and a higher per-unit cost, so it wins at low volume and loses at scale. Choosing the wrong one for your quantity is the most common avoidable cost in this category.
What drives cost in this category
Fabric weight
Quoted in grams per square metre. It is the largest single driver of material cost and the specification most often left out of an enquiry entirely.
Print method and colour count
Screen printing charges setup per colour; digital does not. Which is cheaper depends entirely on your order quantity and how many colours the artwork uses.
Handle construction
Length, width and how the handle is stitched to the body. This is where bags fail, and reinforcing it costs very little at the specification stage.
Certified or organic cotton
A real certification carries a documented chain of custody and a real premium. An uncertified claim costs nothing and is worth nothing.
Minimum order quantities
| Plain, stocked fabric and size | Lowest floor in this category, and among the lowest of anything worth importing. |
| One or two colour screen print | Rises to the point where the setup charge stops dominating the unit price. |
| Custom fabric weight or dyed colour | Set by the mill's minimum rather than the bag factory's, and usually the real constraint. |
| Certified organic cotton | Higher floor plus documentation. Insist on seeing the certificate and the transaction paperwork, not a logo. |
Where these are made
Bag making sits inside the wider textile and garment supply chain, and Guangzhou is the usual route in for anything involving cut-and-sew work and printing. For plain stocked bags at very low quantities, Yiwu is often the better answer — lower minimums, less customisation.
What goes wrong
- Lighter fabric than agreed. The single most common substitution, invisible in a photograph and immediately obvious in the hand. State the weight in writing.
- Handle stitching failure. Almost every complaint in this category is a handle pulling away from the body. Specify the stitch pattern and reinforcement.
- Print cracking or washing out. Usually the result of the wrong ink for the fabric, or insufficient curing. Ask for a wash test on a production sample.
- Shrinkage and colour bleeding. Untreated cotton shrinks. If final dimensions matter, they have to be measured after washing, not before.
All of these are cheap to catch and expensive to discover after delivery. A pre-shipment inspection that includes fabric weight verification and a wash test costs a fraction of a reprint.
Fabric weight and printing behave the same way across textile goods generally. See garment sourcing.
