Get ready for Valentine’s Day

Why the print industry thinks around four months in advance when it comes to fulfilling customer orders?

If you go into any major supermarket on Boxing Day, chances are that there will be very little evidence of Christmas. In truth, with Christmas out of the way, the big stores will already be focusing on their New Year sales displays and beyond that, they’ll be starting to think about Easter, still a good three or four months away. Planning ahead is routine for the print industry, which has to produce the items in advance for customers like the supermarkets. But it’s also a very useful process for any customer that is planning on ordering printed items as part of their annual marketing and promotions. This means that if you know that you are going to be ordering banners, posters, display stands or any other printed item in the year ahead, chances are you will be able to save money, time and potential bottlenecks and last minute hitches if you sort out your print requirements early.

Of course, it’s not easy or possible to anticipate everything in advance. Some artwork needs to be printed nearer to the day, because for relevance it needs to include the latest information. For example, brochures or leaflets will need to be accurate at the time of use so for events like seminars or exhibitions, they might have to be printed quite the late in the process because final facts, figures or even speaker line-ups are still being confirmed. But there’s plenty of other things that benefit from being printed early and can be ready months in advance.  Promotional branded give aways such as calendars, pens, mugs, baseball caps, notepads and more can and should be ordered and printed early. In terms of preparation, it’s always useful to think about what sort of promotional display items you are going to need. Will you need roller or pull banners, or A boards or a pop up display? Roughly how many of each item will you need? Start getting some ballpark figures ready as early as possible.   If you are going to be appearing at an exhibition, contact early the organisers and find out how your intended displays are not only going to fit but also look their best in the space you’ve booked. What’s more, it pays to think ahead when planning the transportation of your printed goods. Are you going to be travelling in a car? If so, what are the parking facilities like? Will you be able to offload heavier items near the entrance at the exhibition centre?  If you are coming by train and taxi, will your roller banners fit on an overhead luggage rack or in the boot of the car? What do they weigh? Will you physically be able to carry these on your own? Sizes and weights of items can normally be found on a printer’s website. Therefore, there’s no reason not to find this out early in the process. If you (or your printer on your behalf) is sending items to a venue on an overnight courier they’ll need to know to weights because this will affect your costs per delivery. Also find out how they are packaged? Will they be shipped in boxes? You’ll need to know the dimensions because this too will affect charges when they are delivered in a truck or van.

Also, when planning ahead, it’s important to be aware that any items that have to be couriered urgently are inevitably going to cost you more. In my experience, customers tend not to remember transportation costs when planning their annual marketing budgets. For companies that rely heavily for sales by attending trade shows and exhibitions, these costs can mount up and be quite considerable when taken over the course of a whole year. Other costs are also often forgotten when it comes to planning annual budgets such as congestion charges or ULEZ fees in and around central and greater London. For these fees, it’s always sensible to allow for inflation because they tend to be subject to regular increases. And lastly, think printer bottlenecks. If every customer left their orders to the last minute at their regular printers, inevitably there will be some unlucky ones where there just isn’t the capacity to left to satisfy their orders.

Don’t let this happen to you!

So, in summary, think seasonally, plan ahead, and work out what items can be printed early, and make sure you keep a note of their weight and packaging dimensions because you’ll be needing these at some point.

Happy Valentine’s Day!