Originally Posted by 2006 Robot Rules

VENDOR – A legitimate business source for COTS items that, as a minimum, satisfies the following criteria:
• The VENDOR must have a Federal Tax Identification number.
o The Federal Tax Identification number establishes the VENDOR as a legal business entity with the IRS, and validates their status as a legitimate business.
• The VENDOR must be normally able to ship any general (i.e., non-FIRST unique) product within five business days of receiving a valid purchase request. It is recognized that certain unusual circumstances, such as 1,000 FIRST teams all ordering the same part at once from the same VENDOR, may cause atypical delays in shipping due to backorders for even the largest VENDORS. Such delays due to higher than-normal order rates are excused.
o The FIRST Robotics Competition build season is only six weeks long, so the VENDOR must be able to get their product, particularly FIRST unique items, to a team in a timely manner.
• The business should maintain sufficient stock or production capability to fill teams orders within a reasonable period during the build season (<1 week). Note that this criterion may not apply to custom built items from a source that is both a VENDOR and a fabricator. For example, a VENDOR may sell flexible belting that the team wishes to procure to use as treads on their drive system. The VENDOR cuts the belting to a custom length from standard shelf stock that is typically available, welds it into a loop to make a tread, and ships it to a team. The fabrication of the tread takes the VENDOR two weeks. This would be considered a FABRICATED ITEM, and the two weeks ship time is acceptable. Alternately, the team may decide to fabricate the treads themselves. To satisfy this criterion, the VENDOR would just have to ship a length of belting from shelf stock (i.e. a COTS item) to the team within five business days and leave the welding of the cuts to the team.
• The VENDOR makes their products available to all FIRST Robotics Competition teams.
• VENDORS must not limit supply or make a product available to just a limited number of FIRST Robotics Competition teams.
• Ideally, chosen VENDORS should have national distributors.
o Example distributors include Home Depot, Lowes, MSC, Radio Shack, and McMaster-Carr. FIRST competition events are not usually near home. When parts fail, local access to replacements is often critical.

FIRST desires to permit teams to have the broadest choice of legitimate sources possible, and to obtain COTS items from the sources that provide them with the best prices and level of service available. The intent of this definition it to be as inclusive as possible to permit access to all legitimate sources, while preventing ad hoc organizations from providing special-purpose products to a limited subset of teams in an attempt to circumvent the cost accounting rules.