Too big for their shoes

[tonypep]

Nothing new but you have too love dealing with corporate. We do a lot of programs that involve Gildan who has partnered up with ESPN who is owned by Disney. This is where the fun begins.

Gildan: We need 20,000 shirts F/B by wed ESPN will supply the graphics
Us: Ok Bring them in on Monday have ESPN send the files ASAP pls
Gildan: Will do
Monday comes: nothing so we reach out to ESP
ESPN: We don't know what you are referring to we'll look into it.
Later: Oh I see you are doing the promo shirts for the Bowl Games here are the files
Us: Can't open them wrong format
Disney: Were were informed you are working with ESPN on the Bowl Game Promo program. Since you are not an approved vendor pls standby
Us to Disney: We are approved pls chk with so and so
Disney: So and so does not work in this division anymorewe will look into the matter
Us to Gildan: Still no blanks. Disney has us on hold also
Gildan: What blanks? Oh the bowl shirts.......I sent them ground should be there on wednesday
What do you mean they have you on hold? Did you get the new files?
Us to everyone: We have the files and are mocking up for approval. Disney has waived the approved vendor issue until they can find it. Shirts just arrived. Pls be ready for new e-mail approvals. Cannot run till we get official approval on all graphics
Hours go by........nothing
ESPN (11:00 Wednesday) All graphics approveds here are the ship to. Everything ships today correct?
Gildan: Are the shirts there yet?
ESPN: Two of the graphics are wrong we will re-send
We are printing the approved shirts
Gildan: Will everything ship today?
Us No ESPN is holding us up
ESPN: Are you printing design X? We just realised we gave you the wrong Pantone for the logo.
We of course had already printed it
Gildan:  What? Well then ship balance thurs Fed-ex overnight (5K) pcs!
Other person at Disney (after we have completed the order) You are not authorised to produce this order pls return the goods and cancel the PO

Partially fictionalized for your entertainmet but this how it goes. Often much more complicated than this as the sales people have assitants following up with redundancy

[Command-Z]

Holy carp. Bill them anyway, keep all correspondence and lawyer up if they don't pay.

All those hoops plus these big guys are nothing but low ballers anyway. Not worth the "prestige" if you ask me.

[inkman996]

ESPN head quarters is up the road from me, do you want me to go there and slap someone specific?

[ZooCity]

That sounds like a real wonder team of clients you have there.   

I admire your patience with them.  I have precious little tolerance for high volume  (by my shops standards that is) jobs with a rush but unresponsive parties.  I always get and give cell phone number up front and single out one person for all approvals.  It's their job to figure our what their organization wants, my job is to get it to them.

Thx for the morning funnies Tony.

[ebscreen]

When the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Just hope the right hand is the one that placed the order, and the left is the one signing
the check!

[Homer]

I'm surprised to see such large companies have this type of ordering process. I always thought they would have every "I" dotted and "T" crossed before a PO was written for 20k units? It looks like  a cluster f of people shooting e-mails around playin tag with someone elses money. . So I guess in the end, do you expect to get paid seeing how they told you to cancel the order? How can you cancel a PO, isn't that as good as a written contract?

[tonypep]

Heres the funny thing.......they pay triple the amount from standard contract and overiight fed-ex 60 boxes stuff like that. Its like the inmates are running the asylum. Guess whos just as bad? Nike, Boxercraft, Addidas, New Balance, Coke, Hillfiger........just about every publicly held company.
But if you you learn how to control all their chaos you can attract a lot of business. With Boxercraft I sometimes felt I was running their company!

[tonypep]

BTW everything worked out and we were the heroes. After all this time I just smile because we expect this type of behavior. Everyone is apologetic and very thaankful after its over.
Until the next order

[Croft]

I'm always amazed how much they will spend on shipping after asking for quotes on printing. I have printed jobs that have cost as much for shipping as the order.
 Overnighting big orders to other countries = big profits for UPS FED EX.

[brandon]

That does sound like a royal pita. While we do not come near your output every day, some of our clients hit those numbers a few times a year. One of them is a massive company that shall we say has a few events a year all over the country. And they know about their events months in advance. They even sell out in advance. But we will be printing up to the last minute and always blows my mind when people 2nd day 3000 shirts and overnight 500. Just a massive amount of wasted money. Profit right out the door for them. For us we make a killing but still just blows my mind

[mk162]

why do you think we told Coke to go fly a kite?  They were shocked we would say no to them.

[tonypep]

With companies like Coke and Disney and Hilfiger you must first pass a compliance audit........and guess who has to pay for that?

[JBLUE]

I would love to know the cost. We overnighted 17k shirts one time to Michigan. The client would not tell me what it cost for anything.

[ebscreen]

On a previous post I was bitching about UPS screwing up a delivery, they
screwed it up even more and had the packages returned to sender (us).

Left them with one day to get the packages back across the country, they ate
$2500 in overnight freight. Granted it doesn't cost them that, but still on the same scale
of ridiculousness as these other companies.

Once they get that large they need to break into divisions or something. At some point
these places get so convoluted they just can not operate competently. Yet they still make money?

Reminds me of printing for a major auto manufacturer. No one at the company could provide a
usable copy of their shiny new model logo. Loops and loops and loops through the phone system.
Ended up finding it on a fan site.

[brandon]

On a previous post I was bitching about UPS screwing up a delivery, they
screwed it up even more and had the packages returned to sender (us).

Left them with one day to get the packages back across the country, they ate
$2500 in overnight freight. Granted it doesn't cost them that, but still on the same scale
of ridiculousness as these other companies.

Once they get that large they need to break into divisions or something. At some point
these places get so convoluted they just can not operate competently. Yet they still make money?

Reminds me of printing for a major auto manufacturer. No one at the company could provide a
usable copy of their shiny new model logo. Loops and loops and loops through the phone system.
Ended up finding it on a fan site.

Hey, did you ever look into World Wide Express like we were talking about? Just curious