{"id":705,"date":"2013-02-15T07:04:24","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T07:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/?p=705"},"modified":"2013-02-15T07:06:19","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T07:06:19","slug":"protect-your-business-proof-all-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/protect-your-business-proof-all-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"Protect your business – Proof ALL orders!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oops! University Misspells Its Own Name on $70K Worth of Canvas Book Bags<\/strong><\/p>\n

I read this article today on Yahoo https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/oops-university-misspells-own-name-70k-worth-canvas-153200695.html <\/a>\u00a0and I thought I would share it with all of you.\u00a0 Anyone and everyone in the imprinted apparel or promotional product industry should read this article \u00a0because I promise you, sooner or later this happens to all of us.\u00a0 It will happen to you.\u00a0 It is not a matter of IF, it is a matter of when and you should have a plan in place to minimize as best as possible this unfortunate eventuality.
\nOne time I embroidered an order of 1,200 shirts where my in-house digitizer (employee) misspelled the word millennium and I didn\u2019t catch it.\u00a0 I presented the proof as \u201cmillenium.\u201d\u00a0 This was entirely my fault.\u00a0 I should have caught it but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Neither did my customer.\u00a0 Neither did her customer\u00a0and he signed off on the project.\u00a0 My customer then came back and signed my work order and we did the job.\u00a0 The mistake was caught by the very first person to receive a shirt.<\/p>\n

So what then should you do to protect yourself?\u00a0 Below are my suggestions.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. When you first obtain a customer you should explain what your policy is on proofing orders.\u00a0 Your customer should be aware it is their responsibility to final proof an order before it goes in to production.\u00a0 You must be firm on this.<\/li>\n
  2. Explain and show your customers how WORDS are not seen as WORDS in programs like COREL DRAW and Adobe Illustrator.\u00a0 Show them how spell checking does not work in applications like this as WORDS are seen as ART and not as words.\u00a0 ESPECIALLY<\/span> once a font is converted to curves, then all bets are off.\u00a0 Or what about the case where a word like CAR is intentionally spelled as KAR for a marketing or branding reasons?<\/li>\n
  3. If your customer tells you it is your job to be perfect you must remind them such a demand is unrealistic and unreasonable.\u00a0 However, it is reasonable for you to request your customer review a proof before you begin production.\u00a0 It is in everyone\u2019s best interest and I would say it is best to go beyond your buyer and have a third party review the proof\u2026someone who is not too close to the project.<\/li>\n
  4. Show your customers examples of how easy it is to make mistake.\u00a0 In the Yahoo article I had to examine the art three times before I saw that university was spelled wrong.\u00a0 Often times your eyes see what they want to see and it is very easy to miss something like univeristy.<\/li>\n
  5. Implement a policy where your customer must sign off on a proof for all orders before they go in to production and adhere to that policy strictly, no excuses.\u00a0 This is easier said than done because to be valid the document should be drafted by an attorney and softened to the point where it does not scare your customers away.\u00a0 Again, no so easy a task but this is to protect both the vendor and the buyer and should be presented as such.<\/li>\n
  6. Post a sign in any location customers have access to that\u00a0explains your policy on proofing orders.<\/li>\n
  7. Before you go in to production have one final quality person proof the project and they must be held accountable for their actions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You have to protect yourself and if possible maintain the relationship with your customer.\u00a0 In my example I had to embroider all of the replacement product at no charge but at least I didn\u2019t have to eat 1,200 shirts and I didn\u2019t lose the customer.\u00a0 \u00a0In the end everyone was satisfied even though no one made any money and the buyer ended up spending a lot more than they should have.<\/p>\n

    I understand it is easy to blame a mistake like this on your customer after you ask them to sign off on a proof.\u00a0 And maybe you will not get stuck holding the bag for replacing the product.\u00a0 But unless you handle it correctly you will almost certainly lose the customer.\u00a0 Because of this you need to be prepared for this eventuality and have your plan in place for how you will handle this.\u00a0 While each case is different one thing that remains consistent is unless you have your paperwork in proper order you don\u2019t have a leg to stand on.\u00a0 So the most important thing you can do is:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    1. Hold yourself accountable.\u00a0 It is your job to get all jobs approved by your customers prior to production, in writing.\u00a0 Period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    If you are not prepared to\u00a0take this step\u00a0then you must understand sooner or later you are going to end up eating a major project.\u00a0 It can be an uncomfortable conversation when your customer asks you, \u201cwhy don\u2019t stand behind your work.\u201d\u00a0 You need to think about how you want to answer that question and be prepared, becuase it will come up more than once.<\/p>\n

    Once upon a time one of my employees told me, \u201clazy men work twice as hard.\u201d\u00a0 And to borrow another aphorism, \u201cmeasure twice, cut once.\u201d Every time I find myself wanting to take a professional shortcut I remind myself of this phrase.\u00a0 It seems like every time I cut a step to save time (even as a favor) it will come back to haunt me and I will end up doing a job twice.<\/p>\n

    Please let me know by dropping me an email or commenting here for any topics you would like to see me cover.<\/p>\n

    I hope you all had a great start to the year and I hope to hear from each of you sometime soon.<\/p>\n

    Steve Freeman
    \nQdigitizing<\/p>\n

    steve.freeman@qdigitizing.com<\/a><\/p>\n

    877-733-4390<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Oops! University Misspells Its Own Name on $70K Worth of Canvas Book Bags I read this article today on Yahoo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}