Just because you're stupid.....

[beanie357]

Here's a goody.
Starts with a 3.5 x .4 inch company name text, lc, embroidery. Contract job.
We indicate the text is so small as to be unreadable on the garments. We don't know what we are talking about. Goods arrive 5 days late, and now this "professional" wants a protoype to show his customer. Ok fine. We do and send. Holy moly! Customer can,t get with the mini text. Ok. Sending in a replacement garment. We redo at new size 1.5 inch and it takes two lines to fit on lc.
Send virtual. Get approval. Finally run job. Send job. Get call. Why is it on two lines? What is he to do if customer does not like it? Why did we put it on two lines, he did not realize proof was how it would look. 3 phone calls later, tell him take the damm stuff and see what the customer says. He will probably love it as you could not read his previous shirts for staff.

Now has two more jobs. We are busy. Too busy. If you are so stupid to be in this industry and not know what a proof is, you are too stupid to help. Ya can't fix stupid, and if you can't make money on stupid, walk away.

[inkman996]

B far one of my biggest stresses in this business is dealing with logos and expectations for embroidery that is ridiculously impossible.  I pull my hair out day after day dealing with customers and brokers trying to have the worse layouts ever for embroidery, and it almost always leads to huge time wasting situations like you just laid out above. Thats what really gets my pressure up is the fact I know I will end up setting up and running several samples emails phone calls tweaks on and on. Life is getting better tho we are becoming more proactive about biting these nightmares in the butt before wasting so much of our time.

[GraphicDisorder]

B far one of my biggest stresses in this business is dealing with logos and expectations for embroidery that is ridiculously impossible.  I pull my hair out day after day dealing with customers and brokers trying to have the worse layouts ever for embroidery, and it almost always leads to huge time wasting situations like you just laid out above. Thats what really gets my pressure up is the fact I know I will end up setting up and running several samples emails phone calls tweaks on and on. Life is getting better tho we are becoming more proactive about biting these nightmares in the butt before wasting so much of our time.

We flat tell people no on a lot of logos since they are not ideal for embroidery.  We ask  if they will allow it simplified (letters with 4 outlines around them, really?)  If they are we will do a quick mock up digitally. 

[mk162]

Most customers understand it.  I have one customer that wasn't told that by their last vendor, and their shirts look like crap.

I told them let's drop the outline and the small text, it's not needed.  They were  fine with it.

[stitches4815]

We just got done doing some FlexFit hats (I ranted about these on Friday) for a customer.  They ordered a small quantity of 72 to try us out.  They had been dealing with someone else previously and wasn't happy with the quality of work, the lack of communication, etc.  They send us the artwork and my wife digitizes it.  She sends a virtual of how it should look, she had to do some modifications to make it work.  This impressed the crap out of them.  The last place they dealt with never showed them squat.  They just sewed the hats out and said here ya go.  I guess it was crap quality.  After approval we did a sew out, took a picture, and emailed it to them.  This also impressed them.  All along the way we were either emailing them or calling them with questions and or suggestions, they liked the fact we did this.  The one thing I don't understand is why the other place was so stupid as to not communicate with the customer.  Then deal out crap embroidery.  I guess I should quit questioning this because we got a new and happy customer.  Thanks to all the hacks out there, you are driving new customers to us.