I keep the YONEX MAVIS 350 page open on one screen and an illustrative quote line on the other, and the quote line is the one that stops me. It reads M350YF, Yellow, Slow, one tube of six, and I built that line for this exercise. On the page beside it, the same code sits beside the same Yellow / Slow pairing. The letter F is doing nothing. The word Slow is doing everything.
None of that proves a quote is wrong. What it proves is narrower and more useful: on this model the code's suffix and the printed speed word diverge, so the speed and color line has to be frozen until a person explains what actually ships. Everything below stays inside the YONEX MAVIS 350 and MAVIS 2000 pages. The item codes, cap colors, temperature bands and pack count are model-specific, and none of it carries over to an OEM factory's own SKU sheet or to a private-label build.
A Yellow Tube on the Quote Desk
I noticed the mismatch the way I notice most of them: while copying values from one column into another, not while reading for meaning. My SKU column wanted a color and a speed, and the page handed me a color and a speed word that disagreed with the letter buried in the code. Two of those three fields would have gone into a purchase order unchallenged if I had been moving faster.
The reason to care is downstream, not editorial. A speed line on a wholesale quote does two jobs at once. It tells the picker which tube to pull, and it tells the buyer which temperature band the shuttlecock was keyed to. When the printed word and the letter in the code point at different speeds, one of those jobs gets done wrong, and you find out at the gym or at the returns desk instead of at the loading dock.
Six Codes, Three Speeds, Two Colors
The captured page carries six item codes: M350S for White / Slow, M350M for White / Medium, M350F for White / Fast, M350YS for Yellow / Slow, M350YM for Yellow / Medium, and M350YF for Yellow / Slow. The specs block beside it lists speeds as Slow, Medium and Fast, colors as White and Yellow, and quantity as 1 tube / 6 shuttlecocks. That is the whole field: two colors, three speeds, six codes, six shuttles to a tube.
A separate key ties speed to cap color and to a temperature band: green cap for Slow across 22–33 °C, blue cap for Medium across 12–23 °C, red cap for Fast across 0–13 °C. I checked those three bands against each other and they overlap at their edges. My reading is that the key sorts roughly rather than drawing hard boundaries, so a buyer near an edge is inside two bands and has a real choice to make.
For SKU work the key earns its place for a second reason. The cap color gives you a physical field to check at sample approval; the speed word is the claim you compare it against.
The Suffix Rule Breaks at M350YF
I tested the suffix rule on paper, which is the only test available to me here: no supplier shipment, no lab result, no batch data for this piece. I wrote the six codes down in a column, split off the final letter, and set it against the speed word printed on the same line. Five of six agree. S lines up with Slow, M with Medium, and M350F carries F next to Fast. The sixth does not. M350YF carries the same F that clears M350F, and the page sets it beside Slow.
I went back over the same page looking for a note, a footnote, or a second table that would explain it, and found nothing. That is the part that bites: a code is supposed to clear itself, and this one cannot. The letter that normally settles a speed question turns into a claim somebody has to stand behind.
The conclusion is narrow, so hold it narrowly. The trailing F is not a usable clearance for M350YF, because the label on the page argues with the letter in the name. Order M350F if you want White / Fast and the code will carry the weight. Order M350YF and you have to ask.
What Would Clear M350YF for Fast Use
Suppose I send the question to the supplier before the purchase order goes out. I would ask for five things in writing: the exact item code, the speed word used on both the tube and the carton, the cap color of the shuttles inside, the temperature band printed next to that speed, and the pack quantity. Five fields, one SKU, one answer that either matches the page or does not.
Three answers are possible and each one moves the order differently. If the reply is that the page label is a typo and M350YF ships as Fast, the caution is overturned for that SKU only, and only if the factory repeats it in writing and an approval sample shows the red cap with the 0–13 °C band. A sales address quoting the same page back at me is not a second source. If the reply is Yellow / Slow, the line stays Slow, the cap should read green against 22–33 °C, and I order on that basis. If the reply is an item code with no speed word at all, the freeze stays where it is.
The sample does the rest. Open one tube from the approval lot, read the cap color in your hand, compare it to the speed word and the band on the carton, and photograph the three together. That photo is what a picker in a second warehouse reads in six months when nobody remembers the email.
Lock These Fields Into the Quote
Six fields belong in the quote and in the approval record, not in a chat thread: item code as printed, color word, speed word, cap color with its temperature band tied to that exact code, pack quantity at one tube of six, and a signed sample approval with the photo attached. The band field is the one buyers skip and later regret, because it ties the speed word to the cap color on the same line.
Then keep the open questions visible as questions. This piece comes with no supplier quote, no MOQ, no lead time, no capacity figure, no customization rights and no sample test result, and none of those should be guessed from a reference brand's page. If your factory builds with a different feather grade or a different cork, the speed word on your carton is the factory's claim about its own build. The bands and codes above describe MAVIS 350 and MAVIS 2000 as published, and they stop there.
Who Should Skip This SKU Check
This reconciliation is not for the buyer who walks into a local shop, buys a single tube, and can read the cap and the label in their own hand. Skip the spreadsheet, buy the tube. It is for the buyer about to repeat an order, print a carton, or hand an OEM spec to a factory three time zones away that will follow it without asking again. For that buyer the move is one email: get the item code, speed word, cap color, band and pack count for M350YF in writing, then release the order.
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