EI Apparel  /  Field Notes
No. 02
For HR & People Leaders
A One Page Read

From spreadsheet to store.

A short walk through how the apparel program changes hands when you stop running it through a Google Sheet, and what your team is actually handing off when it does.

Almost every SaaS company under five hundred runs apparel the same way. A Google Sheet collects sizes, an email thread chases down the holdouts, a screen printer or a swag vendor takes the order, a box arrives, someone distributes it. Twice a year. Maybe.

Nobody designed this. It is just what apparel defaulted to when nobody had time to design something better.

Before  /  The spreadsheet flow

The people team owns every step.

  • Send the size-collection email. Chase the holdouts.
  • Compile sizes into a tab. Forward to the printer.
  • Approve the proof. Catch the typo on the second proof.
  • Wait six to ten weeks for the bulk batch.
  • Receive the box. Sort by team. Distribute.
  • Field the questions about wrong sizes and missing items.
  • Repeat for new hires, off-cycle, and rush requests all year.

After  /  The store flow

The store owns every step.

  • Employee opens the store link.
  • Picks what they want, in their size, from a curated catalog.
  • We ship it direct to their address.
  • New hires get a credit on day one. Same flow.
  • Reorders are automatic. Nobody chases anyone.
  • Wrong size? The exchange goes to us, not back to your inbox.
  • Reporting and budget controls live in the dashboard.

The handoff, step by step

01 / 06
01
Brief

You tell us what the program needs to do.

Who is buying. Budget per person or per team. Whether the store is just for employees, or also for partner gifts and customer thank-yous. Thirty minutes, once.

You
02
Catalog

We curate the catalog.

We stock Nike, Under Armour, Columbia, '47 Brand, vineyard vines, and about ninety others. Picked for your team, your region, the time of year. Not a wall of options. A tight, considered selection that fits the brand.

EI Apparel
03
Build

We build the store on your brand.

Your logo, your colors, your domain if you want one. Mockups for everything before anything goes live. Around two weeks from brief to store-ready.

EI Apparel
04
Launch

You drop the link in Slack.

That is the launch. No rollout plan, no training. People open it, pick something, hit submit. The reaction in the channel is usually some version of "wait, this is ours?"

You
05
Run

We handle ordering, fulfillment, and reorders.

Employees order. We ship direct. New hires get a credit added when their email is in the system. Inventory and restock happen on our side. You do not touch the warehouse, the printer, or the spreadsheet again.

EI Apparel
06
Report

You get a quarterly read.

Spend by team, top items, who has used their credit, what is moving. Caps and budget controls live in the dashboard. The version of the program a CFO would want to see. An hour a quarter, max.

You

The spreadsheet was never the problem. It was just the only tool the people team had. The store is the better tool.

HR time, before 30 to 70hrs/yr

Spread across collection, ordering, distribution, and one-off requests.

HR time, after 1 to 3hrs/yr

Light steering, occasional question. The store runs on its own.

Time to live ~ 2weeks

From brief to a store you can drop in Slack on a Friday.

What it actually feels like

Apparel stops being a thing on your list. The gear gets better, the brand gets sharper, the unboxing actually feels right. None of it requires you to manage any of it.

The handoff makes more sense once you have seen what is on the other side of it. Take a look at the example store.

Rudy Baez Corporate Apparel Lead EI Apparel