Society by and large looks down on procrastination for good reasons but you will still pretty much find it everywhere you look. You will discover that there are many costs generated by procrastination and of out of all businesses, this is particularly true in promotional products. If hunting for some promotional products for a branding effort becomes your responsibility, make sure you get started early.
Streamlined planning and prioritizing of tasks is of utmost import in business. Multi-headed hydras like branding initiatives gain a great deal from making some venues a larger priority over others when time is a limitation. Change promotional products selection towards the top of the list! Just about every promotional company has an express alternative for orders, but there are almost always limitations and it isn’t an across-the-board pledge.
There is a metric ton of pieces out there that explain why promotional products are an important aspect of branding efforts so I won’t go into it in this space… at least this time! Keep promotional item acquisition at the top of the priority list because the procedure to go from placing an order to getting your order can end up being a complex one. You might place your order with one company, but the assembly of the item itself usually happens down the at another company. The promotional products company is the one making sure everything gets done, but they don’t usually have their own plants for making the items you purchase. Getting to the point where you can observe a proof, an example of what your logo or company name is going to look like on the finished product, is an important step. Your order won’t get past the proofing phase until there is approval because of how complicated the process is, and your order will have to go through several steps before it gets to that point (artwork approval, artwork formatting, etc). Any graphics mistakes mean starting over and trying again, or rolling with the punches and handing out an incorrectly colored logo.
There can be busy time of year during which that you aren’t going to be able to convince a manufacturer to work on your order before everyone else’s orders. What can be known as “busy” will differ from producer to producer, but for the most part they operate on a “first come, first served” basis. Manufacturers deal with orders as they arrive, and with an extra payment to cover the extra effort, you can rush an order through this system. In rare cases the production of seasonal promotional products is completely halted except for specific times of the year. The last thing you want to do is find out that the rush time you were relying on in your scheduling isn’t available because you didn’t check beforehand.
When you put off a complex process like this, things that go wrong are going to cost you. It might cost an organization a great deal, and not just cold hard currency. Things that require a complicated procedure, like promotional items, are the last thing you want to put off to the last minute just because the costs of waiting vastly outweigh the benefits. Although you by and large aren’t going to be spending a lot of money on each individual item, when you’re buying a few hundred it will add up. If you have to rush your purchase order, it gets even worse. Then let’s add some rush transportation in addition to that! If you really waited too long, you may end up with a bunch of promotional products that you end up not using for what you wanted because you ran out of time. This could mean a lost sale, or worse, lost customers.
