Request for Proposal: Smithsonian Magazine E-Commerce Solution

To request a copy of the complete RFP, please email LeiteC@si.edu.


RFP Objective

There are many audiences and interest groups that are served by Smithsonian Media properties, but for which no e-Commerce offerings have been developed due to lack of internal resources dedicated to developing and marketing product for these groups.

Given Smithsonian's brand strength, successful retail and licensing experience, and its large digital visitor base, SE is seeking proposals to partner with a full service e-Commerce and fulfillment solutions provider that will develop, source, stock, sell, and fulfill appropriate merchandise to visitors of smithsonian.com and tweentribune.com. Any response to this RFP shall take into consideration that SE desires a vendor that can perform the following with no, or very limited, up-front capital and ongoing operational expense to SE. The successful vendor will provide a full-service solution, either entirely through its own resources or through partnerships or outsourcing with other companies to achieve the required full-service solution, which shall include:

1) Product Development/Sourcing;
2) Creation, maintenance, reports of an on-line store platform;
3) All necessary incremental marketing (marketing beyond that on smithsonian.com, tweentribune.com, and current SE newsletters and mailing list);
4) Warehousing and inventory ownership;
5) Operations, fulfillment and customer support; and
6) Business analytics reporting