How to Make a Miracle Happen and Save $20,000
Situation:
Our client, Brocade, had a tradeshow across the country in Florida. Management decided late to give out a t shirt to attendees. Problem: the tradeshow was in 5 days.
Solution:
The obvious solution was to get the shirts printed as close as possible to the tradeshow, but there were no qualified printers that could produce a complicated full color imprint on a dark shirt, with multiple imprint locations to our quality specs, price point, or meet the timing. We printed them locally, where we could keep constant quality control measured and run four back to back eight hour shifts. That left us three days to get them to the tradeshow. Shipping 10,000 t shirts 2nd Day or Overnight with Fed Ex or UPS was going to cost in excess of $25,000. Our relationships with our freight forwarder allowed Doghouse Promotions to organize the impossible truck driver relay. The drivers are allowed to drive straight for a certain amount of hours before legally needing to rest. We lined up a truck driver relay so each driver drove the maximum amount of time before swapping trailers for a new driver. This happened enough times that the shipment never stopped moving for more than a couple hours.
Result:
The shirts were delivered on time for about $5000, saving our client $20,000!
