A Tacoma industrial company recently called us about embroidery and logo wear. They said they were unhappy with their current embroidery vendor and looking for a change. It seemed like an easy fit because they already had identified from their prior work a variety of clothing options that were available from our suppliers. When we visited to clarify things and make the order official, someone handed us two jackets that “the owner picked up at Costco” and asked, “Can you do these too?” Wanting to please a potentially lucrative client, and figuring we could put our foot down later about our No Customer-Supplied Items policy, we agreed.
Fast forward one week. We successfully embroidered and prepared all of the clothing items this client had requested. The two Costco jackets remained. We put the first one on one of our embroidery machines. Less than 60 seconds later, disaster struck and the machine tore a hole through the jacket. The odds of this happening on any garment placed on a machine at any shop industry wide are are 2%. But when the garment is something that the customer supplied and the logistics of replacing it involve driving around a city to purchase a replacement jacket at retail pricing while not getting other clients’ orders fulfilled, the odds seem to approach 50%. So then, because the client wanted to save $10-20 on a jacket, we have to decide whether to spend $300-$400 of down time and cash outlay to fix something.
We’ve previously written about our general policy of not accepting customer-supplied items (see Five Reasons Why Seattle-Tacoma Embroidery & Screen Printing Shops Don’t Want to Work with Garments You Have Supplied). It gets tempting to break that rule when we think there’s a nice big client on the other side of “just this one time.” But every time we are reminded why the local embroidery shops that did do this have gone out of business.
Sorry folks, but that’s not worth the effort. A business that wants to stay in business for the long haul can’t lose a dollar of business for clients who want to save a dime.