In October 2020, Fumax received an inquiry from a Brazilian OEM looking for a new PCBA supplier.
The inquiry arrived directly at the company’s official sales mailbox. The customer had already provided the expected quantities for the following year and listed ten different board projects, including sensor boards, terminal boards, and ECU-related boards.
The annual quantities ranged from several hundred pieces to more than 10,000 pieces for some of the sensor boards.
This was not a customer asking, “Can you manufacture PCBs?”
They already had products in production and were looking for a new manufacturing source.
The first email was short:
“I’m looking for a new provider for PCBA in my industry.”
Then came the quantities.
There were multiple projects:
The customer also added:
“Any quastions sendme message.”
There was already a clear commercial opportunity here. But before putting a price on ten different PCBAs, Fumax needed to understand exactly what the customer wanted manufactured.
And that started with the files.
On October 10, Jim replied after reviewing the files.
Most of the projects appeared to have both BOM and Gerber files.
One did not.
Instead of assuming that the board was a PCBA, Fumax asked:
“All each file has BOM and PCB gerber file. Only the attached file has just PCB gerber, but no BOM file. is it just a PCB baord, no components? Please advise.”
It turned out that this particular item was indeed a PCB rather than a PCBA, so there was no component assembly required for that project.
That distinction mattered.
The customer was asking for a quotation covering multiple products, but they were not all manufacturing the same thing.
One was simply a bare PCB.
The others required component sourcing and assembly.
For a quotation covering ten different boards, that difference could materially affect the total price.
There was another quantity question as well.
One of the boards did not have a clearly stated annual requirement in the original inquiry.
Jim followed up:
“What is the required quantity for [Sensor Board B]? I could not find it in the list.”
The customer replied:
“[Sensor Board B] – 10000 PER YEAR”
Now the quotation basis was becoming clearer.
A few days later, while reviewing the BOMs in more detail, Fumax found another issue.
Some components were marked “NÃO MONTAR” — Portuguese for “do not mount.”
The BOM included items such as a buzzer, relay, and several connectors that carried this instruction.
Rather than treating those components as normal BOM items, Fumax asked the customer directly:
“On some BOMs ([Terminal Board A] and [Terminal Board B]), we found some parts say (NÃO MONTAR), such as below, what does it mean? Are these parts needed, or no need? Please advise.”
The customer clarified that those components did not need to be purchased or assembled by Fumax.
They would handle those components themselves.
Again, this was a small question.
But it was exactly the kind of question that could create a problem later if nobody asked it.
If Fumax had simply imported every BOM line into the quotation and assumed every component needed to be purchased and assembled, the quotation would have been based on the wrong manufacturing scope.
And if the opposite assumption had been made, missing components could have become a production problem.
So the quotation process was already doing something more important than calculating a number.
It was establishing the actual scope of supply.
On October 19, Fumax completed the first quotation.
Jim wrote:
“I am glad to tell you that we have completed the quotation for your project, total 10 boards.”
At this point, the customer came back with a new requirement.
Instead of simply asking for a quotation based on the original production quantities, the customer wanted five samples of each PCBA.
That meant the sample requirement covered multiple board types and different quantities from the eventual production order.
The customer also supplied a new Gerber revision for one of the boards:
“this gerber is a new version [Terminal Board A] 2.3.1.”
Then came a sentence that would become important for the rest of the discussion:
“i need material as fast as possible.”
So there were now two things happening at the same time.
The customer wanted to evaluate samples before committing to the full production quantity.
But they also did not want the sample stage to become a long delay before production.
That gave Fumax a choice.
Simply quote the requested five samples for every board?
Or try to find a way to connect the sample stage with the eventual production order?
On October 21, the customer asked:
“What do you need to production to 5 samples for project to me?”
Fumax proposed two options.
The first was straightforward: quote the requested sample quantities separately.
But the second option was designed around the customer’s expected production.
Jim explained:
“Option 2: You can place order for attached production order along with down payment, we will buy all materials. Once materials are arrived, we will make you 5 samples for approval. After approval, we will produce remaining quantities. There will no additional cost about samples.”
The logic was simple.
If the customer was already confident in the design, Fumax could purchase the production materials first.
Then the first five pieces could be produced from those materials for approval.
Once the samples were approved, the remaining production quantity could continue without waiting for another material purchasing cycle.
Jim summarized the benefit:
“It will save cost and save time.”
That proposal was not ultimately the route the customer took.
But it showed something important about this RFQ.
Neither side was treating the sample order as an isolated transaction.
The customer was already thinking about how quickly they could get the boards into their hands.
Fumax was already thinking about how the sample stage would connect to production.
The commercial discussion was therefore starting to overlap with the manufacturing process.
And then the price became the next issue.
By October 22, the project had moved from file review into a more concrete quotation discussion.
The customer asked Fumax to quote five samples for each PCBA and sent an updated Gerber file for one of the boards.
The message was direct:
“Hello, please quote 5 pieces per pcba and change gerber attached, this gerber is a new version…”
And again:
“i need material as fast as possible.”
At this point, the customer’s intention was fairly clear.
They were seriously evaluating Fumax as a new manufacturing supplier, but they wanted to validate the boards before moving forward with larger quantities.
For Fumax, the challenge was that producing five pieces of ten different PCBAs was not the same as producing a normal production order.
There were different BOMs, different component quantities, different setup requirements, and different production economics.
So the first sample quotation came back relatively high.
On October 26, Jim sent the customer the revised quotation:
“I have double checked with our team. The best price we could offer is total $2650 USD.”
But he also explained why the sample cost was higher than a normal production unit price.
The boards had different levels of complexity, and Fumax intended to manufacture the samples using the same type of SMT production equipment used for normal PCBA manufacturing.
Jim explained:
“Even for samples, we will use SMT machine to do it.”
He specifically mentioned the more populated boards, including the ECU and terminal boards, where manufacturing them properly was more important than simply finding the cheapest way to build a few pieces.
From Fumax’s side, the reasoning was straightforward:
The customer was evaluating a potential long-term manufacturing supplier.
The samples therefore needed to represent the actual manufacturing process rather than being treated as informal hand-built prototypes.
But the customer had a very different view of the number.
The response came almost immediately.
The customer did not reject the project.
In fact, the opposite.
They made it clear that they wanted to place the business with Fumax.
But the price was still a problem.
The customer wrote:
“you need to understand that we are very interested in placing all of ours with your company, but its price is much higher than its competitors.”
Then they gave Fumax a specific target:
“my target price is 1500 usd”
And then came an interesting sentence:
“I count on you to close this deal…”
The customer was essentially saying: we want to work with you, but you need to help us make the numbers work.
This was useful information.
Instead of simply saying “too expensive,” the customer had given Fumax a concrete target.
$1,500.
The next question was whether the two sides could reach it without making the sample order commercially unreasonable.
Jim’s immediate response was not to promise the $1,500 price.
He replied:
“Samples are always higher prices. Please let me know your target prices and I will try best to meet.”
The target had already been provided, so Fumax went back internally to see what could actually be changed.
The important point here is that the discussion did not turn into:
$2,650 → $2,300 → $2,000 → $1,700 → $1,500.
Instead, the sample configuration itself was reconsidered.
That turned out to be much more practical.
On October 27, Fumax came back with a very different proposal:
“I have special offer for you. We can make 2 pcs for each project, total cost is 1500 USD.”
This was the first point where the customer’s target was actually reached.
But Fumax had not simply cut the price of producing the same quantity.
The sample quantity had changed.
Originally, the customer wanted five pieces of each PCBA.
The new proposal was two pieces of each project.
That made the economics more reasonable while still giving the customer actual manufactured samples for evaluation.
It was a fairly normal commercial adjustment:
If the target price cannot support the original scope, change the scope rather than pretending the original scope costs less.
The customer did not reject the proposal.
Instead, they came back with another adjustment.
And this time, the sample requirements became more complicated.
On October 28, the customer sent a new sample quantity request.
Most boards remained at two pieces.
But three particular sensor boards needed 20 pieces each.
The updated list included:
The customer also explained:
“Please send a sample quote for the following quantities requested by our engineer…”
This was an important change.
The customer had effectively accepted the general idea of reducing the sample quantity for most projects, but their engineering team had a different validation requirement for three of the sensor boards.
Those boards needed more pieces.
So Fumax recalculated the quotation again.
The result was:
“It will be added 250 USD more, total 1750 USD now.”
The final sample quotation was therefore $1,750.
The sequence was now:
Initial quotation: $2,650
Customer target: $1,500
Revised proposal: $1,500 for two pieces per project
Customer’s updated requirement: three boards increased to 20 pieces
Final quotation: $1,750
This was not a dramatic negotiation where one side simply “won” and the other side surrendered.
The quantity changed.
The manufacturing scope changed.
The price changed with it.
And both sides continued moving toward the same objective: getting the boards manufactured and validated quickly.
There was another interesting exchange earlier in the process.
When the customer asked about producing the five samples, Fumax had already suggested an alternative:
“You can place order for attached production order along with down payment, we will buy all materials.”
The reason was that the customer had already provided meaningful annual quantities.
Some of the boards were expected at several thousand or even 10,000+ units per year.
So from a manufacturing perspective, buying production materials and using part of them for the initial samples could make more sense than treating every sample as a completely separate project.
This was particularly relevant because the customer had explicitly said:
“i need material as fast as possible.”
In other words, the commercial discussion was not only about how much the samples cost.
It was also about how quickly the customer could move from sample approval into production.
If we only looked at the $1,500 target, it would be easy to interpret the customer as purely price-driven.
But the email chain suggests something more nuanced.
They were comparing suppliers.
They cared about price.
But they also had a real production requirement behind the RFQ.
The original inquiry contained annual demand.
The customer had engineering staff involved in the sample requirements.
They provided revised Gerber data during the quotation process.
They asked for specific sample quantities for certain boards.
And they repeatedly emphasized speed.
So the actual decision was closer to:
Can this supplier give us a competitive enough price while also handling our files, quantities, engineering changes, samples, and timing?
That is a very different question from simply:
Who gives me the cheapest PCBA quote?
There is another detail worth looking at.
The first RFQ arrived on October 9.
By October 12, quantity clarification had already been exchanged.
By October 16, Fumax had clarified the “do not mount” components.
By October 19, the first quotation had been completed.
By October 22, the customer had requested five samples per board and supplied a new Gerber revision.
By October 26, the customer had openly challenged the price.
By October 27, Fumax had reached the customer’s $1,500 target by changing the sample configuration.
By October 28, the customer changed the quantities again.
By October 29, the quotation had been adjusted to $1,750.
The project was not sitting still while one side waited for the other to respond.
The requirements were changing, but the communication was keeping pace with those changes.
That distinction matters.
Fast does not necessarily mean fewer questions.
In this case, there were quite a lot of questions.
The project moved quickly because the questions were being answered quickly.
Once the final sample quantity and price were agreed, the customer proceeded with the order.
The sample payment was received on November 1, 2020.
That was less than one month after the original RFQ.
The interesting thing is that the final order looked quite different from the first quotation.
The customer started with an inquiry for ten board projects.
Then the two sides clarified the actual manufacturing scope.
The customer asked for five samples per board.
The quotation came to $2,650.
The customer said the price was too high and set a $1,500 target.
Fumax changed the sample configuration and reached $1,500.
The customer then increased the quantities of three boards to 20 pieces each.
The final price became $1,750.
And the customer paid.
No single email closed the deal.
It was the accumulation of small decisions.
The last part of the story, however, is not really about the quotation.
It is about how the two sides communicated while all of these changes were happening — and why the customer was willing to keep moving forward instead of simply taking the RFQ to another supplier.
That is where the WhatsApp conversations and the urgency around the first order become important.
The original RFQ had arrived on October 9.
Twenty-three days later, on November 1, the sample payment was received.
Less than one month had passed between the first inquiry and the first paid order.
During those 23 days, the project had gone through:
RFQ → file review → BOM clarification → quantity clarification → quotation → sample quantity change → Gerber revision → price negotiation → revised sample configuration → final quotation → payment
And that was the beginning of the project.
There was now a real order behind the RFQ.
And Fumax had a new OEM customer to manufacture for.
The entire exchange started with one short sentence:
“I’m looking for a new provider for pcba in my industry.”
Twenty-three days later, the customer had made the first payment.
Ten PCBAs.
Multiple annual production quantities.
Several rounds of quotation changes.
One revised Gerber.
And a new EMS supplier.
That was how this project started.
