“Prepare and Prevent vs Repair and Repent”.
I first heard this magical sounding phrase from fellow PromoKitchen chef Danny Rosin during a discussion about the promotional marketing industry.
Believe or not, I’m not the only guy obsessed with doing things better.
It’s been scribbled on my planning whiteboard ever since.
I knew in that nanosecond when Danny expressed it, that it would become the basis for a fun article for the decorated apparel industry.
Here’s why:
When you stop and think about how your shop operates, the decisions and the strategies that you cement early in the process have a direct link to the success of what follows later.
- It could be mechanical, such as having level platens on your press. Are there variables that disrupt your established process that you need to control? Maybe there are things you need to fix and just haven’t gotten around to doing that. What impact do you think that procrastination produces?
- Maybe it’s with numbers; as if your price lists are built incorrectly maybe you won’t make enough money to survive. Are these based on using your costs, or just a price list you gamed from someone else?
- It could even be with your staff as if you hire the wrong people the consequences could be disastrous. Do you have some knuckleheads on your staff that you know don’t belong? Why are they still there? How many folks on your team are “A” level staff members?
It’s like that old Fram Auto Oil Filter commercial from the 70’s. “You can pay me now, or pay me later.”
In shops, stuff goes wrong all the time. When you start digging into the reasons why you’ll discover that the solutions usually live upstream to the problem.
For this article, I’m going to single out a few ideas that could make a gigantic impact on the overall success of your shop.
Are there more?
You bet your patooty.
As the world loves a debate, please add yours to the comment section!
Here we go!
Prepare and Prevent vs Repair and Repent
First a little theory.
The workflow mindset in your shop should be to develop a repeatable process so every order that comes through is produced correctly, on time, and with perfect craftsmanship.
That doesn’t happen by accident.
When you cut corners, don’t have good training, use inferior products or equipment or even accept work you can’t handle…brace yourself for some big challenges.
There are many facets to running an apparel decorating business and they all need to work together in harmony to produce optimal results.
If not, you’ll spend more money, time and effort attempting to make up for that issue that is blowing up in your face. Kablam!
Prepare and Prevent instead of Repair and Repent.
Right?
Let’s dive deeper into a few of the most problematic areas that can affect the success of your business:
Money
It’s the reason we’re all in business. Who doesn’t want more of it?
Some questions:
- Do you feel you are as financially prepared for your companies success as you can be?
- Are your production and scheduling strategies dialed in?
- Do you know what your break-even amount is each month?
You would be surprised at the number of people I speak with that don’t have a firm grasp on their company’s basic fundamental financial facts.
Tip: There is no shame in hiring an outside accountant to help you with your accounting practices.
These days there’s no reason to have to struggle with any complex business accounting situations. Get the guidance you need to run routine shop quarterly financial statements with a balance sheet and also profit/loss reports.
You can also get help calculating your accounts receivable and accounts payable days and their effect on working capital and cash flow.
If you are a shop that struggles to pay your vendors on time, despite being busy, you probably need to call in the big dogs to get some accounting coaching.
There is no shame in raising your hand and asking questions.
Problema Nàºmero Uno
Of course, one of the biggest financial challenges in this industry has always been constructing a pricing strategy that works. Too many shops just use something they cobbled together based on a spreadsheet from their competition.
“We’ll just do everything 5% less than that guy”, isn’t a strategy that has any long-term legs. Because it isn’t based on your shop’s financial reality.
Strong businesses connect the dots between their real costs and their pricing. “Here’s what it costs us to do the work and here’s what we want to make.”
Price-for-profit should be the strategy you are implementing.
Prepare and Prevent
Build a pricing schedule based on your actual cost information. Use the 5 Cost Bucket Method to establish this baseline. Read the blog here or watch the video here. Set your financial goals and work towards them daily.
This prevents that feeling at the end of the year when you wonder where all the money went.
Repair and Repent
“Will beat any quote” pricing is a race to the bottom.
Learn to discover and sell the value you bring to your customer. Do the strategy work and retool anything that doesn’t measure up.
Find a way to win. Appeal to better customers.
Just because you have been operating with less than perfect pricing doesn’t mean it’s chiseled in stone for how you operate.
Don’t be afraid to make the money you deserve for your hard work.
Staff Training
Your shop is only as good as the weakest member of your team.
That being said, what are you doing today to improve that situation? Training might seem like wishful thinking, but here’s why it is so important.
At least once a week, someone emails me and asks where they can find trained, ready to go, press or embroidery operators. It’s easily been my most asked question for years.
There is an incredible demand for these positions everywhere, but there isn’t an obvious industry pipeline as they are such specialized career positions.
I’ll bet you can guess my response.
They are already working in the shop!
Prepare and Prevent
If you have read other blog articles or listened in on my employee training webinar you know I’m a big proponent of what I call “The Rule of 3”.
The Rule of 3 dictates that for any core task in your shop you need at least three staff members fully trained in these positions. To get that, you’ll need to build a fully functioning employee training program. Preparing is all about planning.
When it comes time to expand your shop, if you have fully cross trained staff members you’ll find that your staffing needs are easily filled. That new press operator is already working for you when you need them.
Then you just train their backups as you hire new team members.
Repair and Repent
If not, you’ll get to say to a customer, “Sorry we didn’t send your order out in time. Susie was out sick that day and she is the only person that knows how to __________.”
This is the lamest excuse you can ever make. Your customer isn’t buying it either.
It just screams, “Hey, we’re fully committed to staying mediocre!”
You know you can do better.
Measurements That Matter
You already probably know the old Peter Drucker quote, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
But do you know why this is important?
It’s because when you use data, you can set benchmarks and standards for what makes sense for your shop.
- How does the work your shop produces compare to industry standards?
- How does the daily performance from one work group, compare to another?
- What do you need to improve these numbers?
It’s the comparisons that truly paints the picture sometimes.
It Is Relational To Your Shop
If you are going to keep stats and spreadsheets make sure you are using the information in a way that will make your shop better. It is crucial that the data set you build is important and in alignment with the goals you have for that department or process.
Improvement goals can’t be shot down from the mountaintop like a lightning bolt from Zeus.
The more effective method is to have the team responsible for the metric help build the understanding of what’s important and how to get there.
You want accountability and having the team help determine the goals can go a long way to achieving better results.
Prepare and Prevent
For example, let’s say you want Press 2 to print an average of 450 impressions per hour. You are keeping production logs and measuring the team’s stats against the other press crews on the production floor.
However, during the initial discussion, the challenge comes out that the biggest hurdle to overcome isn’t running the machine that quickly. The issue is the abundance of pinholes that have begun to appear on the screens.
The crews have to stop printing constantly to tape them up. Upon investigation, you discover that the glass on your vacuum table hasn’t been cleaned in quite some time. Lint and dirt on the glass are causing a pinhole explosion. (Hey, here’s another reason to buy that Computer to Screen imaging system!)
By having the discussion, and constantly checking with the teams, performance goals are more readily achieved.
Repair and Repent
For another example, let’s look at the temperature settings on the press dryers. Normal plastisol ink cures the exact moment when it reaches 320 degrees. One degree more doesn’t make any difference, as it isn’t going to cure it any better.
The digital temperature setting posted on the control panel of the dryer is often used as the default mindset when it comes to ink curing.
Just because the setting shows 365 degrees doesn’t mean that is the temperature in the chamber. All it takes is an open back door with the right alignment, and a strong wind gust and the chamber temperature can drop considerably. (Or another common problem is when staff positions fans to cool the shirts coming out of the dryer, and instead they force air back inside the chamber.)
About a week or two later is when you find out that you have been shipping undercured shirts to customers.
Uh-oh.
Try using a donut probe at least once a week or as challenges surface, to determine the correct temperature of the ink on garments going through the dryer chamber.
Establish your standards. Then follow up to see if they are being met.
The Shirt
How much thought are you giving to what style, color or specifications you are using for the shirts your shop decorates?
Many times the blank shirt price is the main attribute that is used when selecting a garment to use.
That wholesale price is a strong reason to select one type of shirt over another, but shouldn’t be the only consideration.
Prepare and Prevent
Some other factors worthy of digging into include:
- Quality of the garment construction. Are the pockets crooked, seams sewn completely or holes in the shirt? Some brands and styles are constructed better than others.
- Are dye lots consistent? There’s nothing more frustrating than having shirt color challenges in the middle of a production run. When the mediums don’t match the color of the other sizes, you know you are in trouble.
- What about shirt color dye migration issues? While you can use different ink strategies to solve this problem, you can mitigate this challenge by using a different shirt too. Not all polyester shirts have these issues.
- Any extra labor involved? Have you ever used a shirt style that polybagged every single shirt in the box? Unwrapping all of those for an order can add more cost to that job.
- The fabric of the shirt matters to how the garment will take the decoration. A smoother hand and a tighter weave can make the design really pop.
- Don’t forget about availability! Out of stock challenges, or multi-day shipments to get those mediums can wreck your production schedule.
Repair and Repent
If you have ever had to redo an order because your customer didn’t like the shirt, you already know what this sting feels like. The work you did with your production was perfect.
The shirt? Not so much.
If you get to choose the apparel blank, why not find one that consistently performs?
While the wholesale shirt cost is important, what extra hidden costs are lurking in production by using a particular style or blank? Would your sales increase if you used a better shirt?
Sometimes these ideas are connected more than you think.
Order Information
Have you ever completed an analysis on the quality of the information coming into your shop for orders?
Incomplete or erroneous information can have a major impact on the workflow throughout your shop. Sometimes this is just wrong information from the start, such as listing PMS 286 blue as PMS 268 by mistake. When that logo shows up green on the proof, that’s when it is caught.
Hopefully, this just causes some rework in your art department and not with an emergency reorder to replace incorrectly printed apparel.
Other times the information is completely missing, and your staff makes the wrong conclusions. This also can lead to rework or delays. For example, when your customer leaves off information on the purchase order or initial art instructions.
Prepare and Prevent
The minute or so you spend double checking something or proof reading for errors can save you an incredible amount of money every year. Before information leaves each department and moves on to the next step in the process, what if each team member spent a moment reviewing their work for accuracy?
For example, the number one challenge in purchasing is ordering the wrong sizes by putting in quantities in the wrong columns when buying goods. 24 S / 24 M / 36 L / 36 XL now becomes 24 M / 24 L / 36 XL / 36 XXL if you are not careful.
How many spelling errors could be caught by just using spell check?
Is your receiving team counting the shirts and checking them in on the day they land in your building? Or, are you waiting a day or two to complete this task? How disruptive is that to your schedule when a problem is discovered?
Repair and Repent
The answer, of course, is to slow down.
Doing it correctly the first time is always faster than doing it over. The time cost of your sales team, customer service personnel or other order entry staff is considerably less than having your production crews redo a job because of some silly mistake.
I’ve stressed this before, but if anyone from production ever has to come up front and ask, “Hey, what’s this mean?”…it means that the order wasn’t entered with clear instructions. If a complete stranger can’t understand how to produce the order exactly as your customer expects, then you are doing it incorrectly.
Think things through.
It pays to double check.
Art
Want to sell more shirts?
A good place to start is with the artwork. Whether the job is screen-printed, digitally printed, embroidered or sublimated; great creative work does make a gigantic difference.
Your creative team matters because this can be a value proposition that you can market to gain more customers. When the only place to get that awesomely designed piece is with your shop, price considerations matter less.
Art also matters for production. There’s a big difference between a file that’s technically masterful and something that’s just dumped into production with finger’s crossed.
Prepare and Prevent
In your shop, who is minding the art store? If art is one of the main drivers for sales success, are you entrusting your shop’s growth to some $10 an hour kid you hired as an intern last summer?
Talent matters. Unlock your potential by ramping up your shop’s creative genius.
Repair and Repent
This also means that you’ll have to train them to understand our industry. The best artists in the industry understand the smallest of details of their craft.
If you have ever had to burn three or four underbase screens for a job because the artist can’t dial in the halftones correctly, you know what I mean.
This doesn’t happen overnight. Throw some challenges their way and give them the R&D time to experiment.
Neatness & Organization
As they say, neatness counts.
I’ve been to shops that were surgical room clean. By that same token, I’ve been to shops that looked like something just exploded.
I guess most are somewhere in between.
For me, I like a shop that is neat and organized. Everything has its place. Jobs are lined up ready to go. Thread cones are put away, ink buckets are labeled and are always clean and with lids. Craftsmanship has always been linked to precision.
Prepare and Prevent
Why? It’s simple.
When anybody can find something without any special training, actions happen faster. Need to find that bucket of PMS 3005 blue ink or a big cone of 1522 purple thread? It should be right there on the shelf lined up by the number. Clean and ready to go.
What job should the work crew produce next? When it is the next stack in the line by the work station, with everything the crew needs to run the order, a huge chunk of downtime is diminished.
Repair and Repent
Of course, the opposite of this is a disorganized mess.
If you have spent more than thirty seconds looking for the screens, ink or thread, or even the shirts for an order you need to consider putting some effort into planning your shop floor. It should be insanely simple to get what you need to do the job.
That crazy mess is costing you money every day as it is impacting your efficiency. Hourly employees probably don’t care, because they get paid the same regardless of their output.
This is a management issue. Solve it and reap the benefits.
Decoration Skill
Ok, here’s the last one.
Decoration skill. This separates the top shops from the wannabees.
You know what I’m talking about here. Are you pushing out amazing stuff that leaves other shops wondering how you pulled that off?
No?
Not quite at that level yet? That’s ok.
It is a journey. Just make sure you are on the right path.
Prepare and Prevent
You should be consistently adding to your self-education in this business.
For many shops, it all comes down to time management. Either they make the time for this stuff or they don’t.
One way to do it is to schedule the time and put an order in the system for yourself. Whether you are learning something new, such as how to do high-density prints with capillary film, or learning to do sew your own patches, making the time for these deep dives can pay off handsomely.
Repair and Repent
What usually happens is a customer will ask for something you’ve never tried before. It’s due Friday.
You have always wanted to learn how to do puff embroidery on snapback hats or use silicone ink on a polyester athletic jersey. Other shops do this all the time.
How hard could it be?
Uh, really hard. Especially for a customer order with expectations, a deadline, and money on the line.
Sure, you might pull it off. But what if you invested in your R&D much earlier in the process instead?
Do yourself a favor and list the top ten things you need to learn that will add value to how the customers perceive your skills and ability.
Prioritize by what will add the biggest impact.
Don’t wait until you goof up an order to learn how to do it properly.
Which is what happened last time, right?
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“You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” – Zig Ziglar
“It’s better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.” – Jackie Joyner-Kersee
“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.” – Joe Paterno
