Strategic planning · Returns and claims
Frameworks for planning corporate merch
A framework is useful only if it changes a decision. The two on this page do: one is applied before a programme starts, to decide what the merchandise is for and how it will be measured; the other is applied at the end, when a delivery is opened and something is wrong with it. Together they cover the two points where a merchandise budget is usually lost — before production, when the objective was never defined, and after delivery, when nobody knows who decides.
The two frameworks
The strategic merch framework starts from the objective rather than the catalogue. Recognition, retention, recruitment and client hospitality all look like the same purchase in a quotation and behave very differently in use. The framework separates them, attaches a measurement to each, and then asks what has to be true for that measurement to move. It is deliberately short: if a programme cannot be stated in one page with a number attached, the brief is not ready.
The returns and claims framework is the unglamorous one, and the one that decides whether a supplier is usable a second year. It defines the categories of defect, the evidence needed to claim, the window in which a claim can be raised, and the decision on a replacement, a credit or a re-run. Without it, every delivery becomes a negotiation conducted in the week after the event, which is the worst possible moment to negotiate.
What each framework settles
- Objective. One purpose per programme, stated in a sentence that would be false for a different programme.
- Measurement. A number and a date, decided before the item is chosen.
- Audience. Who receives it, who approves it and who pays for it.
- Defect categories. Manufacturing, decoration, packaging, specification and late delivery, handled differently.
- Evidence. Photographs, batch numbers and the delivery note, so a claim is not an argument.
- Window and owner. How long a claim stays open and who is allowed to approve a credit.
Every framework
Two frameworks: one for planning, one for the delivery that follows.
What we are not
Corp-Merch.MX is an independent production workshop for corporate merch, uniforms and business gifting, invoicing to SAT under CFDI 4.0. These frameworks are our own working method, offered for reference. We are not a consultancy, an auditor or a standards body, and adopting a framework here does not certify anything about a supplier, a client or a programme.
Apply the framework to your programme
Send the objective you are working towards and the date it has to show a result by. We will come back with the framework applied to your case, including the parts of it that do not fit — that is usually where the useful part is.