There are 7 aspects that affect the time it takes for us to deliver printed items.
Scheduling
Let us know at the earliest opportunity that you have a job and the date it needs to be delivered. As a guide give standard printed items 5-6 working days for production and delivery. As humans, some of us love to leave things to the very last second; anything is possible but jobs that are not given sufficient time miss deadlines and collect errors. As much as we all love providing the impossible it is very stressful and, in most cases, unnecessary. World Asthma day is on the same day every year – get a grip.
Artwork issues
Believe it or not, most years we have to amend over 70% of all artwork files to ensure that they print correctly and yes this includes very large London agencies. This is the biggest issue in delaying jobs. If you are unsure, send in your artwork file for us to look at and feedback on at the earliest opportunity. An early proof is fine. Ask us for templates. Talk to the studio.
Paper stocks
If your job is printed on our standard paper stocks that we keep in stock, then this will a) reduce turnaround times and b) reduce costs. Most paper orders are available to us the next day but some paper stocks take 2-3 days working days to arrive.
What jobs are scheduled?
Once we have an order in progress, we send out delivery dates to our clients. When someone wants an urgent job then we have to shuffle our existing jobs in production to prevent a late delivery. Although we tend to keep some spare capacity, this often means overtime, late nights and weekends.
Finishing
Finishing is the process that print goes through before it can go to despatch for packing and delivery. The simplest finishing is trimming to size and basic folding. More complex finishing, such as booklet making, laminating, embossing, glueing etc, all add time to the job.
Standard = Speed
As a rule, if you want to grab someone’s attention you need stand out. That means something that’s a little different. We are BIG fans of stand out. But it costs extra and increases turn around time. Even a non standard business card size means that these cards can not be trimmed at the same time as everyone else’s. The guillotine is programmed to set sizes. Come away from the standard, be that sizing, folding, paper stocks are you will need to add a good few days to production time.
Delivery
We send out all our work as standard on a next day delivery service. Very occasionally, jobs get ‘stuck’ at a delivery depot, or the van has not managed to reach their destination. (I won’t list the reasons why this can occur, but they are varied and wonderful) On occasion, we can offer a timed and location delivery, such as before 10.30am to a particular exhibition stand.
