Large orders... do you count them?

[beanie357]

Yes. Only exception is same day largish say 1000 up that has full cases, with customer sign off  on numbers ahead of time.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

counted 4 times

the guy that pulls the order - counts the dozens / breaks open factory boxes to make sure correct size and color are inside.

the person that stages the order counts the individual shirts

the person at the end of the dryer counts the shirts and packs in boxes or re-stages for the next side of shirt

the person in shipping counts the shirts to make sure that the customer is getting the exact count.

[GraphicDisorder]

Curious on you contract guys, your counting the shirts customers are providing?  I wouldn't have guessed you'd do that?

[Frog]

Count twice. Make half of an "X" on the appropriate number on the order sheet when laying out and stacking to print, and the other half of the "X" when packing.

How else can you be honestly incredulous when the client claims you shorted them?

[ebscreen]

Curious on you contract guys, your counting the shirts customers are providing?  I wouldn't have guessed you'd do that?

Absolutely. How else do they know that their garments were shipped correctly? That's why we have the database email them
to let them know when it's been checked in completely. We try and check in same day in case of any issues. If we didn't and it's time to
print we would be on hold until they get the garments in and that would suck. Covers us both. Just part of doing business I
suppose.

Speaking of which, it would seem many distributors got caught short this spring in terms of labor etc. We're getting a lot of
mi-ships lately.

[inkman996]

Large orders are counted by the cases, the misc box is counted individually.

Then the order count is tracked on the auto to confirm the cases were correct which is normally the case.

[GraphicDisorder]

Curious on you contract guys, your counting the shirts customers are providing?  I wouldn't have guessed you'd do that?

Absolutely. How else do they know that their garments were shipped correctly? That's why we have the database email them
to let them know when it's been checked in completely. We try and check in same day in case of any issues. If we didn't and it's time to
print we would be on hold until they get the garments in and that would suck. Covers us both. Just part of doing business I
suppose.

Speaking of which, it would seem many distributors got caught short this spring in terms of labor etc. We're getting a lot of
mi-ships lately.

I only ask because I have seen some people say contract is basically we print your shirts, we dont check them for holes, count, nothing. 

Personally we dont do contract so we count everything but always wondered how some others did it after seeing some of those policies in the past on various sites.

[inkman996]

Curious on you contract guys, your counting the shirts customers are providing?  I wouldn't have guessed you'd do that?

Absolutely. How else do they know that their garments were shipped correctly? That's why we have the database email them
to let them know when it's been checked in completely. We try and check in same day in case of any issues. If we didn't and it's time to
print we would be on hold until they get the garments in and that would suck. Covers us both. Just part of doing business I
suppose.

Speaking of which, it would seem many distributors got caught short this spring in terms of labor etc. We're getting a lot of
mi-ships lately.

I only ask because I have seen some people say contract is basically we print your shirts, we dont check them for holes, count, nothing. 

Personally we dont do contract so we count everything but always wondered how some others did it after seeing some of those policies in the past on various sites.

We count all contract orders providing they provide us with order PO's. If they do not then all we have to go by is the packing slip and not being able to match that to the order PO we cannot tell if there is a missorder.

[ABuffington]

Count In, Count out.  Too risky to just open boxes and start printing.  A lot of companies I visit just go with the dozen folds and stack a pallet to 1440 and pallet wrap.  However, if you print for a large apparel company chargebacks are the rule, not the exception.  We also had to check for shading, dye lot differences so it paid in the end to avoid a large chargeback by shading and grading the shirts first.  We also stacked 300pc one direction and 300 the other direction to press out the shirts so the baseplate white had a good flat surface. 

Our loader often had final inspection of the shirt.  We used flip loading just so we could see the back and the front of a shirt as it's loaded onto the pallet.  We also kept a running count of the flawed shirts to see if it exceeded the extra's we bought so that we could run over to the distributor to pick up  more.  We got lucky on our choice of the plant location, within minutes of a major distributor, so when we hit the 200-300 left we had time to replace all rejects.

Counting in and out also prevents in house theft.  When we printed for Disney it was amazing how many shirts could go missing!  Often we had to pack immediately, palletize, shrink wrap and put the pallet in a secured fenced area.  At least someone liked the prints!

[ebscreen]

I only ask because I have seen some people say contract is basically we print your shirts, we dont check them for holes, count, nothing. 

Personally we dont do contract so we count everything but always wondered how some others did it after seeing some of those policies in the past on various sites.

Right. I've seen that stated quite a bit. Understandable but isn't going to lead to long term relationships with quality contract clients. That's
more for the folks that print for johnny off the street that "has this box of shirts".

We even count in full cases, I don't know how many I've seen that have been off, typically by the dozen.

[GraphicDisorder]

I only ask because I have seen some people say contract is basically we print your shirts, we dont check them for holes, count, nothing. 

Personally we dont do contract so we count everything but always wondered how some others did it after seeing some of those policies in the past on various sites.

Right. I've seen that stated quite a bit. Understandable but isn't going to lead to long term relationships with quality contract clients. That's
more for the folks that print for johnny off the street that "has this box of shirts".

We even count in full cases, I don't know how many I've seen that have been off, typically by the dozen.

I agree, I just didn't know if you contract guys justified some of your pricing by effectively "only" printing.  I am sure some do, like you we count it all.  Did 5k order the other day, probably 4 of those cases had at least 1 shirt missing.  We ordered extras so we were good.

[Sbrem]

We count everything don't matter 12 pc or 1500, count on the way in and on the way back out, also check size's check for holes etc.  We treat every order the same big or small...

Darryl

We are fortunate enough to be within 30 - 45 minute driving distance from Bodek, AlphaBroder (NES branch) and Commonwealth Cotton, so in most emergencies, someone can go get what we need.

Steve you lucky Dog!!!!

It is a bit of alright Darryl. And, we do a lot of contract, and we're not paid to count piece by piece over and over again. Check the cases and packing slips, that's good enough until unpacking/staging, then the catcher does the final count, makes the packing lists and seals the boxes. The shipper only has to ship. And to answer Brandt, we bend over backwards for our contract customers, and they trust us implicitly. We have maybe 10 large contract customers that have stayed with us for at least 15 years. Like anything, do good work, treat them with the same respect you would want, and get paid accordingly. I've told them many times how to save money time and put their best foot forward when going back to the end user. We have some pretty big corporations, national and international, that appreciate what we do and keep coming back for more. One them recently sent in new art and left out the TM. We pointed them out to our contact, and he bummed out big time as they had just taken receipt of 10K water bottles without the TM. Aye, Carrumba...



Steve

[3Deep]

We had a contract job last year dropped shipped to us, we check the order to verify and we found over half the order was seconds, called the custy and ask, and low and behold it was the wrong stuff.  that's one of the reason we check boxes when they come in, but we're not getting 5K to 10K orders so it's a bit different for us..so we have a little time to check.

Darryl

[dirkdiggler]

we count everything TWICE!
Before and after printing.

pierre

same here

[Rockers]

We count every order before and after printing. On top of that we check all shirts for holes, dirt to avoid customer complaints. If we find any rejects we get the garment supplier to replace them right away.