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General => General Discussion and ??? => Topic started by: cleveprint on March 06, 2013, 01:13:25 PM
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Well I had an interesting past 24 hrs. A good customer of ours, a school, had a rally today for a sports team that made it to the state finals. They called yesterday afternoon around 1:30 wanting 800 shirts for this morning at 10:00!! I was able to make it happen, ordered the shirts, drove down to Heritage in Columbus to pick them up and printing first thing this AM. Made us feel good that we were able to get artwork done, screens made and everything staged in a few hours. Our customer was as happy as can be.
Sometimes when things go right, I really like my job!
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Well I had an interesting past 24 hrs. A good customer of ours, a school, had a rally today for a sports team that made it to the state finals. They called yesterday afternoon around 1:30 wanting 800 shirts for this morning at 10:00!! I was able to make it happen, ordered the shirts, drove down to Heritage in Columbus to pick them up and printing first thing this AM. Made us feel good that we were able to get artwork done, screens made and everything staged in a few hours. Our customer was as happy as can be.
Sometimes when things go right, I really like my job!
Super quick turn, that's awesome. We couldn't pull that off here.
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Rush jobs suck. I hope they paid out the @ss for them. If not then they will expect this same service on every job from now on. I had a good customer go bad once like that. I did the impossible and then that was there new expectation.
800 shirt rush in less then a day is very impressive.
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We didnt charge them a huge rush, just bumped the price up .25 from our normal price. It helps that we were a little slower this week and that I have a supplier that is somewhat close that I was able to pick the shirts up. We do not do this every day! Everything just fell into place on this one...
This customer knows our regular turn around. They were ecstatic when we said we would be able to do it. If they weren't a good customer, Id have had to think harder about taking the job.
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We didnt charge them a huge rush, just bumped the price up .25 from our normal price. It helps that we were a little slower this week and that I have a supplier that is somewhat close that I was able to pick the shirts up. We do not do this every day! Everything just fell into place on this one...
This customer knows our regular turn around. They were ecstatic when we said we would be able to do it. If they weren't a good customer, Id have had to think harder about taking the job.
Sometimes this is all it takes to get a customer for life.
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That's rad. We never get to do overnighters, though we offer it b/c we're in MT and nobody wants anything so bad they want to pay to overnight ship it into here on top of our rush charge.
25% upcharge is a very fair deal for a job on that timeline, I would've went 50% + any costs associated with expediting the garments in. I'm sure you have a very enamored client now and that word of mouth is more powerful than any advertising you could buy.
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That's rad. We never get to do overnighters, though we offer it b/c we're in MT and nobody wants anything so bad they want to pay to overnight ship it into here on top of our rush charge.
25% upcharge is a very fair deal for a job on that timeline, I would've went 50% + any costs associated with expediting the garments in. I'm sure you have a very enamored client now and that word of mouth is more powerful than any advertising you could buy.
Zoo I think he only added $.25 to each garment. So he added $200 for the rush. Still an 800 shirt order with an added $200. I think If I could fit it in I would have.
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We have six salespeople and this was getting out of hand so we had a meeting a coupleof weeks ago. The sales reps were firmly reminded that this is the exeption and they need to inform the customers as such. I don't share pricing as that leads to the enevitable peeing contest but there is a charge associated with rushes. That said we do several a week. It can lead to other business.
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Again, our market is a bit different than most. We work a lot with with sports teams, a lot of Major and Minor League Baseball. Come playoff time, rushes are the norm. And no up charges for them for team business. It's what we do.
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It seems like we are doing things like this for customers a lot these days. We've had a few of those 24 hours or less turnarounds this year and it does feel good when you can get something like that in and out so quickly. The problem comes when those customers expect that every time they order.
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I blame the Internet
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I will only do a rush job when it doesn't disrupt anything else... so its rare for us. We give away a lot of work over time frames.
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We do normally charge a rush fee, and it varies by what it is we're trying to do and what time frame we have to do it in. I think I've heard the 20% markup fee thrown around as a rush charge which seems reasonable to me. Most of the time the sales person will come to me and ask if we can do the job and what has to be done to do it and we come up with a price on the spot. We should probably have a standard fee for rush jobs but we all know all jobs are different.
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We do a tiered percentage. You'd be suprised how quickly these jobs turn from "we need them tomorrow!!!", to "oh one week will be fine". Typically if it's a friend or someone we like, we will waive it.
One Week/5 Business Days: add 10% of the total order
Three Business Days: add 15% of the total order
Two Business Days: add 20 % of the total order
Overnight: add 30% of the total order (not always available, please email us first!)
Within the day: add 50% of the total order (not always available, please email us first!)
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Being able to do this sort of thing has netted us some major clients. Most that surprisingly don't
ask for the same the next time.
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Mine are kinda brutal but meant to deter. If a major client needed 1k pcs in 2 days I would never charge them an additional 50% (I'd get something but not that much) but it covers those clients needing 24 pcs with a 1co imprint for a total of $162 or something. In that case, yes, I want $80 to work that out in 2days.
We also just straight up waive anything up to 5 days if we have room in the sched.
It's hard to make rates like this work across all jobs.
Priority 7 Day - $50 flat rate
Priority 5 Day - $75 flat rate
Express 3 Day - 25% of total plus actual inbound garment shipping costs
Express 2 Day - 50% of total plus actual inbound garment shipping costs
Express Overnight - ask for quote
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7 days is a rush order?....
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7 days is a rush order?....
Haha. No it's a "priority" job in the lingo I came up with. ;)
We are 3-5 day ship just for garments and can get backed up in the shop to 3-5 days on production in the high season so that puts are std turn at around 8-10 business days. One of our main suppliers mis-ships or ships defects on every single order as well so that often adds a day or two when they have to overnight replacements. It's easy for us to hit 8-10 days but getting down to 7 or below requires vigilance on checking in our orders asap in the morning to catch the errors in time to make that turnaround.
I don't think I've ever charged the 7 day though, we can almost always accomodate it without too much ag. I do usually charge it if it needs to be 100% guaranteed on that date/time. With the auto this year I imagine 7 days will no longer be "priority" type of order and we can drop these charges overall but again, they are primarily deterrents and setup to cover small orders too.
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3 to 5 days to get shirts? Wow that would make things hard. I can have shirts in 2 hours here at the shop if I really had to. I couldn't do 3 to 5 days. You must keep inventory and/or buy about 2 extra of every color and size. I bet you have a ton of ways you have figured out to fix shirts from mess ups you could share with us.
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Somehow I get the feeling that where Chris is people are a little more accustomed to waiting a bit longer than most...
We're at 10 days standard as well.
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3 to 5 days to get shirts? Wow that would make things hard. I can have shirts in 2 hours here at the shop if I really had to. I couldn't do 3 to 5 days. You must keep inventory and/or buy about 2 extra of every color and size. I bet you have a ton of ways you have figured out to fix shirts from mess ups you could share with us.
It's hell sometimes. We do have to order extras constantly and it's very hard to reflect that into our pricing/ordering rules. "Why can't I get the exact size run I ordered of all 12 of these different garments in 6 days?" It's hard for our consumers to understand so we just try and roll the cost of dealing w. it into the pricing. My lastest brainstorm is to require at least 3 of any size on an order but that's not going to go over well. Some suppliers, like AA, we must double check every single invoice against our actual order when they email it upon shipping to catch short shipments before we open the box and find all our smalls are missing or the wrong color and we need to be on press by tomorrow.
Keeping inventory is just about impossible with the array of garments we offer, just the extras that we over order take up enough space as it is.
This is partly why I'll always be higher on a rolled in garment price than most, getting the garments for an order ready for press is more work/cost sometimes than the printing!
I actually ran without a spot gun for years- care in what you are doing is the first step but since having employees there is shirt attrition and a faster pace and we have a gun loaded with SPIFF II, the hippy version of the spot cleaner, now. It gets most things out but is prob very weak compared to the nasty stuff.
But here's one technique- we had (need to replace it since it broke) a household device called the "clothes shaver" that was designed to shave off fuzzies from yer clothes. If you get a light amount of ink on top of the shirt fibers, like from pulling to quick with too much tack and the shirt snaps back on the print, you can cure it and shave it off. Can also work for light scorching.
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Hey Zoo thanks for the clothes shaver idea. I know when we are under crazy deadlines and forced to run our autos as fast as we can, we get the occasional snap transfer of ink. I can see this being a handy tool for those times and where applicable. Is there any online you know of that you would suggest?
Thanks much
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No suggestions for one, I think ours was the "clothes shave" or some pun like that, just a home use thing with batteries.
Seems to be a few on Amazon.
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Speaking of the zim gun, my supplier is always asking me who I'm buying my zim fluid from and I have to tell him that it's still him, we just don't use it often. He says most of his shops buy a couple gallons at a time and buy fairly often, when a gallon will last us 6 months on a good stretch. Seems like we use it more to get out dirt and grease stains than ink. I like the shaver idea, that won't cost much at all.
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Good job, well done. My attitude is that if you can make it happen, then do it. 800 pieces isn't even 2 hours run time on a decent auto. Of course you can't disrupt everything, but like I said, if you can, you can.
Steve
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Try being on St Thomas USVI. The ship only comes in twice a week. Then everything has to go through customs where with a little "green persuasion" you could get it cleared the same day (depending on who was working that day) We could charge whatever we wanted for rushes.
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That clothes shaver is a pretty neat idea--when I throw a string of ink on a garment (or on myself,) I flash cure it and peel it off--as long as you don't rub it in, it almost always works.
Even the 'hippie' formulations of that crap are nasty as hell...
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The Spot gun solutions are not that bad. They do taste a little funny but after a few drinks you don't even notice.
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Even the 'hippie' formulations of that crap are nasty as hell...
I know, the stuff is gross. I looked up the chem and it's basically non-flammable ligher fluid....?
Jon it tastes a little better on the rocks with a splash of rose's lime.
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non-flammable lighter fluid....?
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Even the 'hippie' formulations of that crap are nasty as hell...
I know, the stuff is gross. I looked up the chem and it's basically non-flammable ligher fluid....?
Jon it tastes a little better on the rocks with a splash of rose's lime.
Right. At least it evaporates fast enough--it keeps the glass cool and the ice lasts FOREVER.
The Spif II is flammable--in fact, in fire fighting procedures they warn closed containers can explode if heated hot enough. I think the main draw is the lack of known carcinogens, and a lower PEL with no methylene chloride in the recipe.