From my limited softgoods experience, here’s my two cents:
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Unless your project is specifically targeted at redefining a certain type of softgoods product (e.g. let’s make a shoe that’s unlike any shoe ever made), you won’t be performing the large-minded research you see from some other project. I don’t think this is because softgoods are any less complicated, it’s just that if you’re doing one specific kind of product, your scope is already considerably narrowed. Some projects are vague in their end goal. You just don’t know what your final physical output will be, and you need a lot of wide research to figure that out. If you’re making a bag, you’re making a bag. There’s no need to research whether or not bags are beneficial to the human race.
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Materials and construction are everything, and you need to know what you’re looking for, what’s good and what’s crap. I think perceived value plays a bigger role in softgoods that in hardgoods because there’s a much wider range of variations on every material at your disposal. You’ll spend hours feeling PU leathers or looking at fabric weaves under a magnifying glass. The wrong one could kill an otherwise great product, and the right one could elevate something otherwise mundane.
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Get to physical samples and prototypes as quickly as possible. No matter how detailed you make your drawings and tech packs, factories and pattern makers will interpret them differently from how you imagine them. Production level sample revisions can be turned around in a matter of weeks or days, and it’s an invaluable part of the process.