# Reality of customers may be skewed



## beanie357 (Mar 27, 2011)

We do some contract work. We run into kooks. Period. How about this one. Screen print. 200 total. Beefy T's. All sizes youth to 3x. One color on front. Different front design on each type (ie: ladies,youth,men's), full back design same on all 200, "full color" for the back, whatever that means to this fellow (2 0r 20 colors?), AND all designs scaled differently for each size to maintain the look.
AND he can't share the graphic for pricing, or let us have a look at the ones he said he had done before. In addition, a rough DTG price to comply on the BLACK shirt with all the requirements was too high! He couldn't sell them for enough! Yi YI YI!
Yes, he could be a snoop competitor, but we think he B a nut!

Sometimes customer reality has to be shared, but it does point out the axioms regarding "can't win 'em all" (or want to), there's one born every minute, and patience is a virtue, all have value in a business persons reperatoire of rules and sayings to live by.

Would be happy to have other "can you believe it" stories to have a seasonal guffaw thread for this merry time of year.


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## AtkinsonConsult (May 2, 2011)

Shep:

Sometimes it's up to us in the industry to educate our customers about the realities of production. Most people when asked don't have a clue what goes into the print production for t-shirts. (Not saying here that you didn't try to educate your client...and you are right he may be a bit off too)

One way to look at it is to just not worry about "what" you are quoting and just push the quote out. Printing a different size screen for each shirt isn't common, but I've handled that before for some clients who wanted one for youth, one for women, one for S-M, one for L-XL, and one for XXL. They paid for each set of screens, and we handled each set up as a different "job". They completely understood that they would have to pay for all those set ups and the extra cost that they would incur for them. The value for them was to have the designs accurately represented on the shirts and placed in a particular manner and were willing to pay for it.

At the end of the day, we're just printing t-shirts. They can all be different or all the same - but either way we want to do a great job and provide an excellent experience for our customers.

I love the way you are handling some stress with a quote with some humor, but I would want to make sure I'm doing a good job of not letting some money walk away. I've always been in mind that I price things fairly, and so I can make money and if someone doesn't buy that's ok - I know I've done my job. You never know what someone will pay for all those set ups and scenarios until you quote them.

Good luck,

-M


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## wormil (Jan 7, 2008)

Someone recently asked me to make them a customized guest book matching the invitation for a party but when I asked why the invitation had a date 2 months old she said it was a sample and wouldn't send me the actual invitation. I knew then she was never going to actually go through with the order and she didn't, after wasting my time with a million questions.

Someone else called me and wanted to know my cheapest price on a uniform but couldn't answer any of my questions like, what is the uniform for? Or, how many do you need? I just told them to call me back when they could answer those questions.


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## beanie357 (Mar 27, 2011)

Sage advice from AtkinsonConsult. A toughie if it's it a contract job and I am not privy to the end user however. Sort of felt if a 20 buck DTG price for those 200 units was way too high for the chap, screen printing to those specs would make the unit cost higher than the rejected DTG cost.
Let's see.
Say 3 sizes for the front one color, thats 6 screens (remember, on black, need a white underbase for quality, and we can't have the graphic ahead of time. Now we want that same setup in several different designs dependent on the wearee. So let's say youth female, youth male, female adult, male adult. So 6 screens x 4 wearee classes=24 screens for the one color front. So far the emulsion salemans doing well on this one.
Now, we have a full color back (what? It's secret) So lets say it's a 4 color, and a white underbase, so we have 5 screensx3sizesx4 wearee classes=60 screens. Okie dokie. 84 screens to do the job (maybe). That's 2.38 garments per screen. Now, if 20 samoleons is heavy for DTG, where do you think the final screen price would be?

While I heartily agree with your basic premise in your post, sometimes in business, NO is a legit phrase. When a customer is so unco-operative even with coaching and info-imparting, the best business decision can be to shake your head, have a chortle and walk away. There are always opportunities right next to the roadblock, if you open your eyes. Just my opinion.


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