contract printing...

[mk162]

John, making small changes to your production doesn't sound like something that whitewater can handle right now.  It's best to let folks like you run that when you probably won't have to invest much to take the work on.  If whitewater gets an auto, pre-reg system and an employee to handle it, he's out a ton of money and what if it turns out to not work out like he expected it.  He's stuck and has to keep doing it.

Tony, generally with those large companies they use their name as a bargaining chip, unfortunately with me, it doesn't put food on the table.

[Sbrem]

If you can handle it, or ramp up to handle it, go for it. You don't want it to take over your shop, and start dictating terms to you or make you put your regular customers off. Once they are there, can you afford to lose them? We went through such a change about 15 years ago, and we're still here, but that customer is long gone. We bought our first auto, moved into a larger space in the same building that could hold the auto and a much larger dryer, had to hire more personnel. Then, go get even more work so that they weren't the reason for us going to work, meaning so big we'd fail without them. My 2 cents...

Steve

[tonypep]

That was the problem back in the 90s. Nike practically all but took over the entire production in shops all over the Southeast; eventually building their own plant in Memphis. That hurt but they had so much volume there was pretty much enough to go around. Then they began to narrow  down the number of plants they used to a select few. The ones left behind closed. They dominate a couple of factories here and there....shops with 12-15 autos. But they are even more difficult than ever to deal with.