nice guy left unhappy

[mooseman]

real nice guy came in this week, said he had a 25 year old tee shirt he just loved but wanted to change the image a little wanted to know if I could erase or block out a part of the shirt and overprint something so he could continue to wear the shirt.
I really did not want to get into a long NOOOOOOOOO answer but I did ultimately however it didn't work very well as  he obviously left very disappointed.
I hate it when the right answer doesn't make anyone happy especially with a nice personality type like this guy was.
BTW I never saw the shirt he did not have it with him .
mooseman

[Sbrem]

Fabric markers if a light colored shirt...

Steve

[Frog]

Was your "no" based on a policy of minimums or the possible nature of the project itself?

[3Deep]

We had customer a few weeks back bring in a 10 year T-shirt and wanted us to copy the art and print new shirt's as they didn't want to wear the original since it was his Dad's shirt.  I told them what we could do and low and behold they said go for, I think we did a pretty good job colors are not the same which they knew going in, but they where pretty happy with it. Original is on the left my version is on the right

[Sbrem]

Very nice Darryl...

Steve

[mooseman]

Was your "no" based on a policy of minimums or the possible nature of the project itself?

Frog this had all kinds of red flags on it......
First off we do not take in anything to work on that I can't replace with minimal effort & cost. My policy is if I take it in and screw it up I replace it no ifs ands or buts. So we are really restrictive on what we take in for that simple reason alone. Some of my competitors especially for embroidery work have the custy sign a waiver that basically says tough darts if I screw up.....I can't work like that.
yes on minimums, I really work every day 7 a week and to spend even 1 hour on a one shirt job when I can turn more in that hour makes no $$ sense to me
lastly and most important the shirt for what ever reason after 25 years had some strong value to him I do not need to take the risk of reducing  the value of the shirt " in his mind " for 20 or 30 bucks....I am too old and too broke to jump through those hoops.
mooseman

[Stinkhorn Press]

We have run into this issue a few times before with people wanting to recreate existing shirts or trying to revive older ones. For most of the recreate customers we kindly pass due to the minimums and if the design is simple enough I refer them to the DTG printer we have a good relationship with down the street. For the most part that makes them happy. I always tell customers "If there isn't something we can help you with, we are always happy to point you in the direction of somebody who might be able to."

Similarly a few weeks ago I had an elderly woman bring me a stack of her granddaughter's old softball shirts from throughout the years she wanted to make a quilt for her. The majority of the shirts had sharpie signatures from her teammates for each year and plastisol numbers that were cracking severely. I explained while I could spray out the remaining plastisol remnants and attempt to press clean number transfers on them it wasn't worth the risk of color running or worse destroying the signatures. I gave her the option of going to the DTG printer who also does vinyl numbers but in the end I think she realized we were trying our best to protect her from potentially losing something of such sentimental value. She seemed to be happy that we were willing first and foremost to look out for her.

She came in last week to  thank me for being upfront and honest, she also said the cracking numbers gives it much more character anyway. Her granddaughter loves it and plans to take it with her to college in the fall.

Sometimes if you can protect a customer from themselves in as gentle and friendly way as possible you will be much better for it.