What the client hands over, and what stays with the vendor
The handover boundary is the part of this engagement most often left vague in a proposal, and vagueness there produces scope disputes rather than savings. A managed rollout works because the boundary is drawn once, in writing, before the programme starts, and because both sides understand that moving a task across the boundary has a cost that nobody absorbs for free. The split below is the version that holds up in practice for a programme of roughly 1 000 to 5 000 units across more than one department.
The client supplies the brief, not the specification. The client states the objective, the audience, the budget envelope, the delivery dates and the constraints that are genuinely fixed — a brand colour that cannot change, a compliance requirement, an internal deadline tied to a company event. The client does not assemble the specification. Converting an objective into a measurable specification is vendor work, and a client that writes the specification has simply moved the hardest part in-house while keeping the fee.
The client owns the brand assets; the vendor owns the production files. The client supplies logo files in vector form, brand guidelines, and any mandatory wording such as a legal line or a recycling mark. Trademark clearance is a client responsibility and cannot be delegated — no supplier can clear a mark the client does not own. Everything downstream of the approved master, from the colour-separated production file to the stitch file and the pack-out dieline, is vendor work and stays with the vendor for the duration of the programme plus a stated retention period.
The client supplies data; the vendor maintains it. Headcount by department, site, role and size comes from the client. Maintaining that register — chasing the missing sizes, closing the duplicates, reconciling against the previous year — is vendor work, because it is a full-time administrative task that nobody inside the client organisation has allocated. The register is the single most important input to a quantity decision, and its quality determines how much surplus a programme ends up with.
The client names one approver per department. Not a committee, not a group thread, one named person with the authority to accept a proof. The vendor runs the workflow and chases the deadline; the client's named approvers respond within it. Where a client cannot commit to a response time, the programme should be scoped as a single-wave run to a small audience rather than a multi-wave rollout, because a staged programme multiplied by an unresponsive approval chain is the specific combination that produces goods sitting in storage past their campaign.
The vendor carries the rest. Sourcing and sampling, supplier selection, production slot booking, print and embroidery setup, quality control, packing, freight booking, customs paperwork, staging, per-department manifesting, delivery, surplus disposition and the final reconciliation all sit on the vendor side. That last one matters more than teams expect. At the end of a rollout the vendor produces a reconciliation: units delivered against units ordered, uptake by department where the client tracks collection, surplus held and where it is stored, and a recommendation on the next programme's quantities.
- Client supplies
- Objective, budget envelope, fixed dates, brand assets, headcount and size register, one approver per department
- Vendor holds
- Specification, artwork library and production files, approval log, production schedule, staging, manifests, reconciliation
- Client cannot delegate
- Trademark clearance, budget approval, internal policy exceptions, sign-off on final proof
- Freeze point
- Artwork freeze at a stated date; changes after it are quoted as change orders
- Surplus handling
- Storage, redeployment to a later campaign, charitable donation, or scrap — decided in the contract, not at the end