Hello Print Fans,

So it has been an interesting couple of weeks here at Capital of London. It has been really busy with more orders that I know how to deal with, and all of the orders have been really complicated.

To start with we had a set of folders that needed to be made and printed. In itself this is not that complicated an order, but as always in the world of printing, things can never go as planned.

This is an order I have been working on for a really long time over two months. I thought the client had forgotten about it so put it to the side believing that I would ever see it again, but a couple of weeks ago the client called up saying they needed the folders produced. Of course I was overjoyed, but then the problems started. The client needed the folders ready for a conference that they were organising and the conference was in 16 days. That sort of time line was fine, so I got my graphic designer to work on the proofs for the folder and these were emailed to the client. These went back and forth for quite a while until we got to a week before the folders were due. It was a Friday night and we still had not heard back from the client on if the Proofs were fine or not. There were only 5 working days left before we had committed to deliver the folders and we were still waiting to hear back from the client. This was a bit of a problem as we had not even ordered the material yet and that would take at least 2 days to get here (past experience has taught us to wait until we have received final confirmation on a proof before we order any material. Otherwise you end up ordering material and the client changes their mind on the last proof and your left with a ream of paper that is useless.)

I had emailed the client on Friday night saying that if we didn’t hear back that night we would not be able to get the folders completed. I stayed after work late on Friday hoping to hear back from the client but there was no response. Eventually I had to leave and I just hoped that the client would email me back at some point over the weekend so we would be able to start the printing on Monday. When I got into the office on Monday morning there was an email waiting for me, but it had more changes that needed to be made.

I realise now that I should have told the client then that we would not be able to produce the folders for her in the time scale that we had left, but as always seems to be the case with me, I really like this client, we do a lot of work for them, and if possible I always try and go out of my way to help them, so I got another proof made and sent it out to the client. Again we didn’t hear back on Monday, It was only on Tuesday morning that we got the confirmation to go ahead with the printing.

Well we ordered the paper, board and envelopes from our supplier and after much begging he said he would get it t us as fast as possible, the paper and board would be here on Thursday and but the material for the envelopes would only be here on Friday. As this was the best he could do we were left with no choice but to accept it and try and organise our day to ensure that we were able to produce the folders and everything else they needed in the time we had.

Well, Thursday came around and I believe our team did an amazing job, in 1 day we were able to produce 500 A4 folders printed in 4 colours, 500 Letterheads, and 500 compliment slips. That’s a lot of work to complete in a short time scale, especially as the letterheads and compliment slips were engraved printed and to give us the best quality (our engraved printing machines are beasts which are over 100 years old) each sheet of paper that you are printing needs to be placed manually.

Well we finished all the work that we could get done on Thursday; we jut needed to wait for the material for the envelopes to get here.

On Friday morning at 10:00, I got one of the worst calls I have had to deal with recently. It was our paper supplier saying that the material for the envelopes had only just arrived from the paper mill and he would not be able to get it to us today. You know that feeling when everything comes crashing down around you, well that’s how I felt at that moment. After frantically speaking to our supplier and asking him how soon we could get the paper, we realized that we would have to come in over the weekend to get the job finished.

Well in the end we did, we came in on Saturday to make the envelopes and print them ad we had them delivered to the client on Monday morning.

It was a huge relief to get this all completed on time, and I was feeling really happy with the effort that had been put in. that is until I had an email a couple of days ago.

The client emailed me because they were a little disappointed with the folders we had produced for them. I was surprised to get this email as I thought the folders looked really good. We had originally wanted to print the folders in engraved printing, but this was working out to expensive for the client, so they had decided to go with the lithographic printing, as it was considerably cheaper.

I am more disappointed in the fact that clients give us unreasonable deadlines and expect us to produce stunning results. We do make it very clear that orders can take up to 10-15 days to complete, to make matters worse the client was not happy that the printing was not up to our usual standard, but all the printing we have done for this client in the past as always been engraved, and this is the best printing you can get. It is impossible to compare something that has been engraved printed to something that has been lithographic printed. What made it worse is that we had offered the client the folders in engraved printing but they had said no.

Situations like this drive me round the bend. Even now a week later I’m still wondering what we could have done differently, and the only way I can see out of a problem like this is in the future is to just say no, if the client expects us to complete something in an unreasonable time, but this isn’t the best solution in my mind. I like the fact that our clients can rely on us. I’ve lost count of the times a client has called me up saying they need something printed and they need it in a few days and I can say not a problem. The best example of this that I can think of was for a client who needed some business cards printed, he called us the day before saying he needed them next day, as he had a meeting with Gordon Brown and wanted to have some new cards. Even thought this meant that we were in the office until 10:30 at night, we stayed to get it done and the client was so happy with all the extra work we had to put in and that makes all the effort worth while.

I’m not sure where this leaves us; I would like to continue to offer this type of service to our clients but if people do not understand what’s happening behind the scenes to get work like this completed we might have to stop and become stricter with the deadlines for our work. I would hate for this to happen as the majority of our clients do appreciate the work we do. Maybe I’m just being to sensitive, but I take a lot of pride in the work we produce, to the extent that often if something doesn’t meet our approval we will scrap the lot and start again from scratch.

In my entire time working at Capital of London we have only ever had 2 complaints (including this recent complaint.) The first was for a wedding invite where the client didn’t like the ink colour once it had been printed, but as the clients had chosen the colour themselves, there wasn’t much that we could do. This is the second complaint we have received, and it caught me a little bit of guard. I hope that our clients can see what we have to go through when we rush an order through for them, (and I didn’t even mention the chaos that is caused by having to put other orders on hold while you complete the urgent job.)

It is not a fun process, and I question if it is worth going through all that effort if it is just going to reflect badly on us. Maybe I should just ignore it, but truthfully I wouldn’t be doing my job if we did.

Next week I’ll try to be back to my usual funny self. In case you don’t get a chance to read that blog let me wish everyone a merry Christmas and a great New Year.