How-to
How to write an RFP for corporate merch
A prose guide — what goes inside each section, which verbs to use, and which numbers never get left out — so a supplier in New York, Chicago, or Austin can respond without a clarification call.
Why most corporate merch RFPs come back empty
An RFP — Request for Proposal — is not an email with a PDF attached. It is a document a buyer writes once and four or five suppliers will read; every minute a supplier spends decoding an ambiguous section is a minute that is not being spent writing the proposal. Most merch RFPs do not fail because of the scoring matrix or the timeline; they fail because of the prose. Three failures repeat: vague verbs where numbers are required, quality adjectives without a standard, and a scope that drifts across the document without anyone having frozen it on a single page.
In the United States the prose of the RFP carries three specific frictions a serious supplier notices immediately. The first is tax: a quote in USD without sales tax, use tax, or exemption status is incomplete. The second is logistics: an RFP that says "deliver to the US" without states, delivery windows, or carrier rules forces the supplier to quote the cheapest routing and renegotiate during clarification. The third is compliance: when the program touches California Prop 65, CPSIA, the FTC Made in USA standard, the Berry Amendment for federal procurement, Buy America Act, USMCA origin rules, or C-TPAT, the prose has to say which ones apply because the answer changes the documentation, the duties, and the lead time.
This guide is for the procurement or brand team that has already decided to run a formal RFP and wants the document to read itself. It covers the prose of the seven canonical sections — cover, scope, technical brief, compliance, logistics, evaluation, and timeline — and the anti-patterns that quietly break a clean comparison. It does not discuss weighting or award decision; only what gets written into the document that leaves the building.
The assumed scope is a mid-market program: 1,500 to 15,000 units across three to ten SKUs, one to three brands, and a 40 to 60 business-day cycle from issue to PO. The structure of the prose holds for smaller and larger programs; only the count of technical annexes changes.
The prose of the RFP in 7 steps
- Cover letter and program header. One page with the program name, the buyer organization and its tax status, the issue date, the proposal deadline, the single point of contact for questions, and a three-line paragraph on what is being sourced and what is out of scope. The cover does not sell the program; it frames it.
- Program scope on a single page. Audience (employees, customers, prospects, channel), use case (onboarding, event, launch, year-end, trade show), total units per SKU, number of SKUs, brands and sub-brands, ship-to states and cities with volumes per location, budget band in USD excluding tax, and the mandatory compliance list — CPSIA if children, Prop 65 if California ship-to, Berry Amendment or Buy America if federally funded, USMCA if cross-border, C-TPAT if international lanes. One page. Anything longer belongs in an annex.
- Technical brief per SKU. Substrate (180 gsm combed cotton tee, 300 gsm PU notebook cover, 18/8 stainless steel tumbler), print method (screen, embroidery, UV, deboss, laser, DTF) with color count and position, Pantone codes with thread and ink equivalents, decoration area with tolerance in millimeters or inches, and individual and master packing with weight and dimensions. Three to seven pages depending on SKU count. Every number carries a unit: grams, millimeters, milliliters, ounces, inches.
- Compliance and certifications. One to two pages with the closed list of compliance obligations: CPSIA for children's products with tracking label requirements, California Prop 65 with warning language, FTC Made in USA with the qualified origin claim, REACH SVHC and RoHS for EU-bound inventory, Berry Amendment and Buy America for federal procurement, USMCA for cross-border preference, C-TPAT for trusted-trader lanes. Each obligation ships with the question the supplier must answer, not with the acronym on its own.
- Logistics and delivery. One page with ship-to cities, addresses or ZIP clusters, delivery windows per city in business days, last-mile carrier rule (USPS, UPS, FedEx, regional parcel), master carton with dimensions and weight, and whether freight is quoted as a line item or baked into unit price. For international lanes the RFP names the Incoterms (DAP, DDP, FOB) and the customs broker of record.
- Evaluation criteria and response format. Two pages with the matrix of five criteria and weights, the exact response format (PDF, spreadsheet, both), the mandatory questions, and the annexes the supplier must complete. The prose of this section matters most: a free-format response yields non-comparable bids.
- Timeline and Q&A process. One page with 10 business days of Q&A, 15 business days for proposal, 5 business days for clarification, and 10 business days for decision and PO. The Q&A rule is written down: every question in writing, every answer published to all bidders within 48 hours, no side conversations. The rule protects the comparison.
Prose anti-patterns that quietly break the comparison
The first anti-pattern is the vague verb. "Several" without a count, without a unit, without a window. If the RFP says "various cities," a supplier quotes three and wins the comparison on cheap freight that does not actually serve the program. If it says "six cities: New York, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Seattle, and Atlanta, with 250 units to each," the comparison closes itself.
The second anti-pattern is the adjective without a standard. "Premium" without a substrate, without a thread count, without a lab test. The RFP prose replaces every adjective with a number: "180 gsm combed cotton tee, double-needle hem, ribbed collar," not "premium tee." A supplier who knows the category understands both; one who does not pads the unit price to cover the risk.
The third anti-pattern is the brand promise without source material. "Full-color logo" says nothing if the mark is a single-tone isotype, and says too much if the mark is a four-color wordmark. The RFP ships the logo in editable format (SVG, AI, or layered PDF) with Pantone codes and thread equivalents, and asks the supplier to price against that material.
The fourth anti-pattern is mixed currencies without a published rate. If part of the program is priced in USD and part in MXN or EUR, the RFP names the comparison rate (the Federal Reserve H.10 release from the day before the deadline) and the tax treatment for each leg. RFP prose does not hide the FX spread; it freezes it before evaluation.
The fifth anti-pattern is "standard lead time" without days. "Standard lead time" is a dressed-up handshake. "Five to eight business days from strike-off approval, with a 35% rush surcharge for three-to-five-day delivery" is a lead time. The RFP carries the number, not the word.
The sixth anti-pattern is the bilingual RFP without a controlling version. If the document arrives in English with sections in Spanish or technical Spanglish, no one knows which version governs. The RFP picks one controlling language and binds the technical vocabulary in a glossary at the front.
The seventh anti-pattern is forgetting sales tax, use tax, and freight in the comparison line. If the RFP asks for unit price ex-tax ex-freight, the matrix sums after the fact and surprises appear. The RFP asks for three lines — unit price ex-tax, freight per city, and applicable tax — and the matrix compares the landed total.
Tools, templates, and references
Base RFP template. A single controlled PDF with a tracking number, issue date, and version table. Seven sections in the order above, with numbered annexes. It does not get forwarded by email; it lives behind a signed link or inside the buyer's procurement portal.
Auditable scorecard. A spreadsheet with the five criteria, weights locked as percentages, one column per evaluator, and a weighted average. Formulas are password-protected; free cells invite bias and post-mortem arguments.
Compliance glossary. One page listing every standard named in the RFP, the response question it triggers, and the evidence document the supplier must attach. The glossary turns the compliance section into a checklist, not an acronym cloud.
Decision memo. One page attached to the PO, naming the awarded supplier, its score, the total cost in USD with tax and freight broken out, the risks identified, and the mitigation plan. The memo is what an internal auditor or ethics committee will read 18 months later.
Useful references. CPSIA for children's products, California Prop 65, FTC Made in USA, Berry Amendment and Buy America for federal procurement, REACH SVHC for EU-bound inventory, RoHS for electronics, USMCA for cross-border preference, C-TPAT for trusted-trader lanes, ISO 105-C06 for wash fastness, ASTM D5034 for tensile strength.
Suggested timeline. 10 business days of Q&A, 15 for proposal, 5 for clarification, 10 for decision and PO. Total cycle: 40 business days. Production runs after the PO is signed, not in parallel with the RFP.