# Corporate Gifting for Apparel Brands on Shopify Source: https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/corporate-gifting-for-apparel-brands Published: 2026-10-15 How a Shopify apparel brand sells corporate gifts without sizing chaos: recipients pick their own size, tiers by budget, one link, zero-dollar orders. An apparel brand on Shopify runs corporate gifting by selling a company a batch of gifts at a fixed price per head, then letting each recipient redeem a one-time code for a piece of their choice, in their own size and colour. The buyer pays you once. Each redemption becomes a $0 order in your admin, and you ship it like any other order. The recipient picks the size, so you never ship a guess. ## Why companies buy apparel as a gift Apparel is a physical object people use in public, which is why companies like it. A good hoodie or overshirt is worn, and the person wearing it is a small advertisement for whoever gave it. The usual occasions are new-hire welcome packs, a company milestone, an annual team gift in December, and thank-you gifts for the clients who spent the most that year. Budget bands vary a lot by company, so I will not quote an industry average. One number is worth knowing for client gifts in the US: the IRS limits the deduction for business gifts to $25 per person per year (see [IRS Publication 463](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p463)). That rule applies to gifts to clients and contacts, not to your own staff, and your buyer's accountant will have a view. It does explain why many client-gift budgets cluster near that figure while staff and event gifts run higher. Treat it as a reason to offer a lower tier, not as a rule about what companies spend. ## The real problem is size, and it is a cost problem When an office manager emails you a spreadsheet with 40 names and says "medium for most, large for the guys," you have two bad options. You can ship guesses, or you can chase 40 people for sizes. Both cost real money. A wrong size means a return label, a second shipment, and a person who now has a bad first experience of your brand while holding something your client paid for. Returns are not rare in online apparel. Appriss Retail estimated the 2024 return rate for online sales at about 24.5% across retail as a whole (see their [2024 consumer returns report](https://apprissretail.com/?p=11300)). That figure covers all categories, not apparel alone, and I would not claim a corporate-gift return rate from it. The useful reading is simple: online buyers already return a lot when they choose for themselves. A gift chosen by a third party who has never met the wearer will not do better. The cleanest fix is to take the guess out of the system. Let the recipient choose. On the Seed gift form, anyone holding a valid code sees your curated products. For a product with several variants, they pick the size, colour or fit from a dropdown before confirming. I checked this in the gift form code: the form reads each product's variants from Shopify and shows a variant picker for any product that has more than one. Prices are never rendered anywhere on the page. ### Limit which sizes and colours are offered You can narrow the variants a recipient sees. In a price-band tier, a product is offered if any variant falls inside the band, and only the in-band variants are selectable. That matters for apparel because larger sizes and special colourways sometimes carry a different price. If you want everyone to choose from the same full size run, build the tier from a hand-picked list or a live Shopify collection instead, so the price band does not drop XXL by accident. Run a tester code and look at the size dropdown on a phone before any card is printed. ### Fit and sizing information belongs on the product page Recipients choose better when they can see measurements. Make sure the products in your gift set have a size chart on the product page, and put a link to it in the card text. Do not rely on a tag like "true to size." A short line such as "this piece runs roomy, size down if you are between sizes" prevents more exchanges than any policy page. ## Colourways, drops and sold-out sizes Gifting draws from live inventory. If a buyer orders 60 gifts in October and you sell out of medium in black by November, the recipient reaches a form with fewer options than the buyer imagined. Two habits help. First, offer two or three colourways per piece, never one, so a single sell-out does not empty a size. Second, check stock for the gift set at the start of each week during a run. If a size is nearly gone, remove that variant from the tier before recipients hit a dead end. Seasonal drops are a trap here. A tier built around a limited colourway looks good in the pitch and breaks when the colourway sells through. Build corporate tiers around core pieces you restock. ## Embroidery, co-branding and lead times Buyers will ask whether you can add their logo. The answer is usually yes, and the consequence is a different workflow. A logo garment is decorated before it ships, which adds days or weeks depending on your decorator, and it means the garment is made for a person. That clashes with a redemption model, where the recipient chooses after the batch is sold. There are three workable ways to handle it: - **No logo, choose-your-own.** The default and the simplest. The buyer's name goes on the card and the box, not on the garment. - **Logo on one pre-sized piece.** Ask the buyer for sizes up front (accept that you will get some wrong), decorate, and ship in bulk. This is a standard wholesale order and does not need a gift form at all. - **Logo on an accessory.** A cap, tote or beanie is one-size, so decoration does not depend on the recipient. Put it in the choice set next to your plain pieces. Quote the extra lead time in the offer. Do not promise a ship date until your decorator has confirmed a turnaround, and add a buffer for exchanges. ## How to structure the offer ### One tier per budget, three to six products each Pick two or three budget tiers and give each its own curated set. A choice set of three to six products works for apparel: it is small enough to avoid decision fatigue and large enough that a recipient finds something they would wear. A typical shape is a lower tier of tees and caps, a middle tier of hoodies and overshirts, and an upper tier of outerwear or a hoodie plus accessory pairing. On Seed, each budget tier is a campaign inside an organisation, which is the record for the buying company. A tier can be a price band (minimum inclusive, maximum exclusive, so a $50 to $100 tier and a $100 to $150 tier do not overlap), a hand-picked list, or a live collection. The price band pre-fills products, and you untick any you do not want. ### Codes, cards and the shared link You mint one single-use code per recipient. Each is eight characters, shown as two blocks of four, built without confusable characters so it survives handwriting. You export the codes to a CSV per tier, and the buyer prints them on cards or emails them. Every code goes to the same permanent page, which you can point at your store with a short path such as brand.com/gave. Each tier gets two tester codes that do not count in the issued and redeemed totals. Redeeming one creates a real $0 order, so use it to test your size dropdown and your packing, then cancel the order. The recipient never sees a price, picks one gift and a variant, types their own address, and a $0 draft order appears in your admin. You can see per company how many codes are issued, redeemed and still out. Payment from the buying company happens however you already invoice, outside Seed. ### When a spreadsheet of addresses already exists Be honest about the fit. If the buyer already has every name, address and size in a clean spreadsheet, such as a small team that onboarded recently, a multi-address checkout or bulk-order app like [Send To Many](https://www.capterra.com/p/10041221/Send-To-Many/) may suit you better. It turns a spreadsheet into orders directly. The code flow earns its place when you do not have the addresses or sizes, which is most of the time. For a wider comparison see [the best corporate gifting apps for Shopify](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/best-corporate-gifting-apps-shopify). ## How to sell it Apparel buyers are usually one of four people. An HR lead buys welcome packs and annual team gifts. An office manager buys for events and holidays. A sales or account team buys client thank-yous. A small agency owner buys for the whole agency and a handful of clients. Each cares about something different: HR wants low effort, sales wants something that looks premium in a box, and an agency owner wants a total price they can approve in one message. Timing matters. For holiday gifting, start conversations in September, send a quote with tier options in early October, and aim to have cards printed and delivered to the buyer by mid-November. For onboarding, offer a standing code batch the company can draw from through the year. For client gifts, the moment is a closed deal or a renewal. ### Pricing math, with hypothetical numbers These numbers are invented to show the arithmetic. Substitute your own. - Buyer wants 40 gifts at $95 per head: $3,800 invoiced up front. - Your choice set is a hoodie, an overshirt and a tee-plus-cap pairing, each costing you between $28 and $34 to make or buy. - Packaging and a printed card: $4 per head, so $160. - Outbound shipping: $9 per parcel on average, so $360. - Expected exchanges: assume 3 of 40 need a second shipment at $9 plus the returned garment, about $54 in added shipping. - Total cost: roughly 40 x $34 (the worst-case product cost) = $1,360, plus $160, $360 and $54 = $1,934. Gross margin: $3,800 - $1,934 = $1,866, or about 49%. Always price against your most expensive choice, because the recipient picks. If one item in the set has a much lower margin, drop it from the set or move it to a higher tier. On the software side, the Corporate plan costs $249 per month, so a single order of this size covers several months of it. See the [pricing page](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/pricing) for the current plan details. ## Checklist before you pitch - Size charts on every product in the gift set. - Two or three colourways per piece, built from restocked core items. - A written exchange policy on the card or the redemption page. - A decorator turnaround quote if the buyer wants a logo. - Pricing built from your most expensive choice, plus packaging and shipping. - A tester code run end to end, with the size dropdown checked on a phone. - Per-tier CSV exports named by company so codes do not cross tiers. ## Where to go next The step-by-step mechanics are in [how corporate gifting works on Shopify](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/how-corporate-gifting-works-on-shopify), and the sales side is in [how to start selling corporate gifts from your store](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/blog/how-to-start-selling-corporate-gifts-shopify). An example of a retailer running this flow is in the [OnlyByGrace case study](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/case-studies/onlybygrace-corporate-gifting). The overview of the feature is on the [corporate gifting page](https://www.seedinfluencers.com/corporate-gifting). ## Frequently asked questions ### How does an apparel brand on Shopify run corporate gifting? The company buys a batch of gifts at an agreed price per head. You give each recipient a one-time code. The recipient enters the code on one shared page, picks a piece from a short curated set, picks their own size and colour, and types their address. A $0 draft order lands in your Shopify admin and you ship it. ### Do I need to collect sizes from the buying company? No. That is the point of a redemption flow. The buyer's HR team rarely knows sizes, and a spreadsheet of guessed sizes is the main cause of returns. On Seed the recipient chooses the size on the gift form, from the variants you allow. ### Can recipients exchange a size after the order ships? That is your policy decision, not a software one. Most apparel merchants treat a corporate gift as a normal fulfilled order and offer one free exchange. State the policy on the card or the redemption page so recipients know before they redeem. ### What about embroidery or a company logo on the garment? Custom decoration changes the lead time and usually removes the recipient's freedom to choose later, because the garment is made for a person. A common split is plain gifts through the code flow and logo pieces as a separate bulk order with a fixed size run. ### How early should a Q4 corporate gifting offer start? Start talking to buyers in September and close orders by early November. Printed cards need time, and recipients redeem over several weeks. Leave a buffer for exchanges, because a size swap adds a second shipment. ### What does corporate gifting cost on Seed? Seed's Corporate plan is $249 per month or $1,999 per year, with a 7-day free trial. It includes organisations per client company, campaigns per budget tier, personal one-time codes with CSV export, and one shared redemption link. ## FAQ **How does an apparel brand on Shopify run corporate gifting?** The company buys a batch of gifts at an agreed price per head. You give each recipient a one-time code. The recipient enters the code on one shared page, picks a piece from a short curated set, picks their own size and colour, and types their address. A $0 draft order lands in your Shopify admin and you ship it. **Do I need to collect sizes from the buying company?** No. That is the point of a redemption flow. The buyer's HR team rarely knows sizes, and a spreadsheet of guessed sizes is the main cause of returns. On Seed the recipient chooses the size on the gift form, from the variants you allow. **Can recipients exchange a size after the order ships?** That is your policy decision, not a software one. Most apparel merchants treat a corporate gift as a normal fulfilled order and offer one free exchange. State the policy on the card or the redemption page so recipients know before they redeem. **What about embroidery or a company logo on the garment?** Custom decoration changes the lead time and usually removes the recipient's freedom to choose later, because the garment is made for a person. A common split is plain gifts through the code flow and logo pieces as a separate bulk order with a fixed size run. **How early should a Q4 corporate gifting offer start?** Start talking to buyers in September and close orders by early November. Printed cards need time, and recipients redeem over several weeks. Leave a buffer for exchanges, because a size swap adds a second shipment. **What does corporate gifting cost on Seed?** Seed's Corporate plan is $249 per month or $1,999 per year, with a 7-day free trial. It includes organisations per client company, campaigns per budget tier, personal one-time codes with CSV export, and one shared redemption link.