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One thing
no sign business can be without is materials. Whether you're a traditional
signwriter or you run a large format inkjet printer, you're going to need
something. A paint brush, a roll of vinyl, even teabags, you've got to
buy them somewhere and that's where the suppliers to our industry come
in. As a small sign shop, I may not buy huge quantities or the full range
of products that suppliers offer, but I do buy a few rolls of vinyl, sheet
materials and my fair share of squeegees, blades etc. on a regular basis.
Why then, when I buy relatively little in comparison to the larger sign
concerns, do I have so many problems?
I'd like
to point out before I go on and on about problems that I am supplied by
quite a few suppliers and the majority are really good at getting the
order right and delivered to the shop on time. The problems arise with
a select few who will remain nameless, but obviously if you recognise
your company by my description of your service, you may want to place
a nice soft cushion at the side of you, just as I do when I'm ringing
up for supplies.
We've
probably all experienced the late deliveries. It's typical, you have to
get a sign out by lunch time and you'd usually receive your roll of vinyl
by 10am. Just enough time, or so you think, to get the vinyl in, cut it,
tape it and apply it to the sign blank. Unlike an episode of Blue Peter,
you can't just reach behind the counter and give the customer one you
made earlier, so you patiently wait for the delivery van. 11am, no sign
of anyone, so the foot starts to tap a little as you sit with your morning
coffee. By half past this foot tap has developed into a bit of a leg shake.
Nothing too serious at this point, you still have just about enough time
if the delivery van arrives right now. By lunch time you realise that
the vinyl isn't going to appear and the chances of you making your customer
smile are about as likely as you being able to legally kill the delivery
driver by claiming temporary insanity. At this point many will ring their
supplier and enquire to the whereabouts of the roll of vinyl and whether
the delivery van has been mysteriously abducted by vinyl-hungry aliens
on route to your sign business. Insert your favourite response (or excuse
depending on how you look at it), followed by a sincere promise that it
will arrive the next day. It leaves you with lots of explaining to the
customer to do and if you're anything like me, a sore leg as the foot
tapping turned to stamping after about an hour.
Getting
the delivery wrong, oh how we laugh with glee at this little gem. Rather
than having your vinyl delivered by the modern day equivalent of the Pony
Express and taking about the same length of time to get from one side
of Manchester to the other, this 'mistake' has lead me to so much hair
loss I've considered starting up my own charity, Save The Hair. I can
understand the occasional problem if you're ordering less than a full
roll of vinyl as this requires an ancient technique called measuring that
some people still have problems with, but when it comes to the colour
of the product, how can someone mistake blue and pink? Maybe there is
a colour wheel where the opposite of blue is pink that I'm not aware of
and I'm supposed to order the opposite of what I actually want to receive
the correct order. The best example I can think of is the time I ordered
25 metres of 4ft wide vinyl in black. Usually I only stock 610mm (2ft)
rolls of vinyl as they fit in my 610mm plotter comfortably whereas a 4ft
wide roll of vinyl would not, a point I made to the supplier in question.
I also mentioned whilst ordering that I was going to be floodcoating a
six foot by four foot sheet of foamboard with the vinyl. Was it a neatly
packaged 25 metre roll of 4 foot wide black that I received? As you've
probably guessed, I actually received the next logical item in stock which
was a full roll of green vinyl at a width of 380mm. As you can imagine,
this made floodcoating the 6 by 4 in black a little tricky.
Another
one to make it onto the blunder list is damaged sheet material. This always
seems to happen on those occasions when you really don't need it to, an
occurrence I believe is known as Sod's Law. Although it's understandable
that a large sheet of material that has journeyed across several counties
and sometimes countries to arrive at your doorstep can be damaged quite
easily as the result of an accident, what isn't understandable is the
response you sometimes receive from the supplier. The majority apologise
and offer to replace the sheet material as soon as possible, and although
this may not be what you want to hear when you have a sign due out in
a couple of hours, it is at least fair. In my case I decided to try out
a supplier a year or two ago that had been recommended. The sheet material
was damaged in transit, the delivery driver made a note of it and I got
on the phone to the supplier to be met with "How do we know that
you didn't damage it?" At this point I think most people may have
become mildly annoyed at the inference that the mangled sheet that has
just been delivered was somehow damaged by you on your way between the
workshop and the phone in the office, and I was no exception. After explaining
that the delivery driver has noted the damage and the fact that I desperately
needed the sheet material so damaging it was not entirely in my interest,
the supplier begrudgingly agreed to collect the sheet material the following
day and replace it with a new sheet. One of the reasons this particular
supplier was removed from my supplier's list wasn't the fact that the
sheet material was damaged, not even the accusation that I damaged it,
but the absence of an apology for the inconvenience it had caused me.
It is
possible that my little sign shop is the only one to fall foul of the
supply gremlins and everyone else receives a top class service with every
order. Its also possible that Elvis didn't actually die and is currently
working as a shelf stacker at the Tesco store in Milton Keynes, but the
likelihood is that everyone has had a problem now and then. Unlike other
Fear & Loathings, I can't really offer a suggestion or a solution
to avoid it either, but for those without space restrictions, a well placed
cushion will save those embarrassing red marks on your forehead and a
first person shoot-em up game can provide some well deserved relief while
you're waiting for the next delivery van.
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