Partners Not Just Customers

If I said it once I said it a thousand times, we want partners not just customers.  And this week we had a  prime example of why.  Saturday morning I got an e-mail at 4:00 AM asking if we could get 30,000 prints done by Tuesday for an event at 10:00 AM.  The event was just out of town so that meant our deadline was 8:30 AM.  Here is how the numbers breakdown.  We can print 1500 prints per hour.  So this would be 20 hours of continuous printing.   So if we needed to make an 8:30 deadline we would have to start printing by noon on Monday.  We would then have to print all night long to meet our deadline.  Here is the tricky part, what are the odds that we would have 20 hours of press time not being used by other customers already and that I could get my employees to stay and print all nigh with no notice at all?

This is what I believe makes Info Screen Printing special. There is no way we have that much free press time.  But here is where having partners rather than customers pays off.  Starting Sunday morning I began calling everyone that had jobs due on Monday.  I explained the situation and we started to move jobs around.  This continued on into Monday early AM with Angie and Chad now on the phones juggling deadlines.  Every single sales person that had a job due moved their deadline giving us the flexibility to complete the large order on time.  

It is interesting how the dynamic nature of the business relationship changes when your customers act as partners.  When there is mutual respect, and a deep personal connection with the people we choose to do business with it changes how you operate.  We spend countless hours trying to make sure each and every partner we work with is taken care of.  But here was a time we needed our partners to take care of us and they did so in a big way.

Big jobs are a way of life for screen printers our size.  They come and go at a moments notice.  They are not consistent and will not pay our bills for the long term.  Our repeat customers are what pay our bills. When the big jobs do come up we as a company need to make sure we don’t jeopardize our long term business for short term gain.  I hope all those that were asked to move their jobs don’t feel like we just pushed them aside or that your jobs were not important. Because if just one of you had said “no” to moving your deadlines we would have passed on the big job.

In the end we got the job done on time.  They were delivered to the Memorial Service in Prescott by 10:00 AM.  

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THANK YOU to all our partners that made this happen

Advanced Screen Technologies
our ink supplier that jumped through unbelieveable hoops to get us ink in time

McCreary’s Tees
for incredible communication and “Just In Time” delivery of the shirts

Our Customers
for clearing the presses so we could produce

Our Employees
for each one of you that worked all night long at a moments notice