Switching merchandise vendors: the migration checklist
Organizations stay with merchandise vendors they've outgrown for one reason: the switch feels riskier than the frustration. Milestone gifts can't just stop for a quarter while systems change hands. The risk is manageable, though, once you know what actually has to move. Here is the full list, in the order it should move.
1. Your artwork and brand files
Request every file your current vendor holds: vector logos, embroidery digitizations, thread colour specifications, and PMS references. This is the step where you learn whether your contract made those files yours. If the digitized embroidery files can't come with you, the new vendor re-digitizes from your vector art, a solvable problem, but one you want discovered in week one rather than week six. When we take a program on, incoming artwork is prepared for each decoration method, proofed with you in writing, and remains your property from then on.
2. Physical inventory
Count what exists: service pins, pre-decorated stock, packaging. Decide what transfers, what gets run out through the old program, and what gets retired. Transferred inventory ships to our Ontario facility, gets received and counted, and shows up in your program's real-time inventory from day one. Warehousing for active programs is low-cost and often included, so the decision is about usefulness, not storage fees.
3. Program data and history
Order history, milestone records, and budget data belong to your organization, and a departing vendor should hand them over in standard, non-proprietary formats. If your current agreement doesn't say so, that's worth knowing before you pick the next one; ours does, and it's one of the evaluation questions we recommend asking everyone, us included.
4. People and access
User accounts rebuild faster than you'd expect when provisioning is automated. Connected to your directory through SCIM, or loaded by CSV, the new store creates accounts for everyone current and skips everyone who has left, which makes the migration a natural moment to shed years of stale access. Employees sign in with a one-time email code, so there are no passwords to migrate at all.
5. The cutover itself
The sequence that avoids gaps: build and test the new store while the old program still runs, load inventory and users, run your acceptance testing, then switch ordering over on a chosen date. A typical implementation takes four to twelve weeks. Our onboarding support for organizations leaving another provider comes as part of the switch: account migration, catalogue setup, user training, and cutover coordination. Employees should experience one email announcing a better store, not a season without one.
What to have in hand before you call anyone
- Your current contract's terms on artwork ownership, data export, and notice period
- A rough inventory count and a list of what's worth keeping
- Your milestone calendar, so the cutover avoids your busiest recognition month
- A sense of what frustrated you, because the next vendor should solve that specifically
A fair share of our managed store programs arrived as migrations from somewhere else. The pattern holds: the dread is all front-loaded, and the employees never notice the seam.