Print Solutions Magazine, March 2005 -- Case Study: Packaging

A Quick Response
(That's the Company's Bag)

It's 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 24, and Wayne Prasertong just received a call from Sunrise Identity. The Woodinville, Wash., company needs 6,400 newspaper bags printed and shipped by Friday. Prasertong, who sells a bevy of bags dubbed Awesome Line, says yes to the order in a hurry. His usual turnaround time for a project is two to three weeks—still fast—but this job redefines "rush order" for his 2-year old company, Art Wayne Marketing Inc., Monrovia, Calif. "That's probably our fortÈ—that we can get work done really fast," says Prasertong, the distributorship's president.

Sunrise Identity offers corporate branded merchandise, screenprinting, private label clothing, promotional marketing and package design services to a wide range of firms. One of its clients, an event planning company, needed the bags for its client, Microsoft Corp. The software giant planned to distribute the bags at an MSN Superbowl event the following weekend. "Our client originally wanted rubberbands to go around newspaper-like marketing materials for their event," says Nikki Ozaki-Simpson, sales coordinator for Sunrise Identity. "At the last minute, the rubberband vendor told us they couldn't meet our in-hands date, so we needed another solution for distributing these 'newspapers.' We suggested the newspaper bags to the client, and they liked the idea."

Prasertong quickly coordinated with his production team at the Southern California-based factory where Awesome Line bags are produced and printed. The actual production time was only about four hours, but there's a lot of up-front time involved in making plates and coordinating a schedule with the printer for each project. To make up for the crunch, Prasertong charged a typical rush fee.

Perhaps Prasertong can deliver top-notch products on a tight turnaround because he's a 20-year veteran in the bag biz. After working for an advertising company for several years, he landed a job with a bag manufacturer as coordinator between the art and production departments. Later, he became the national sales and marketing manager before leaving to launch Art Wayne Marketing at the end of 2002. His three independent salespeople moved with him. As the company's president, Prasertong usually handles "hot jobs" himself, he says.

So would Sunrise Identity work with Prasertong again after the Superbowl bag blitz? Absolutely, says Buffie Zwicker, the company's sales coordinator. "He was very accommodating in the fact that we had given him two original ship-to addresses, and then one of those changed. He was able to keep up with the change and get the bags to the right locations and on time."

Although Prasertong and his client hit their deadlines, they made another switch and distributed the bags at another launch event rather than at the Superbowl affair as planned. All that matters to Prasertong, though, is that he was able to deliver the product on time: "What I'm hoping for is that they're happy with the project, they're happy with the service and they will give me a call again."

—Sarah Whitman

Tips for Time Crunches

No matter how far you plan ahead, sometimes a project falls through and you have to scramble for a backup in a hurry. If you need a rush job, you have ways to make the process smooth. After all, the happier you make your vendor, the more likely you'll get the results you want.

ï Make sure you have all the details before contacting the vendor. Otherwise, the vendor may not be able to determine whether he can do the job. Gather information such as how many copies of the product you need, what type of artwork you'll supply, where the product should be shipped and when it needs to arrive. The less back-and-forth communication, the more time you'll save.

ï Plan to work as quickly as the vendor. "It pretty much has to be one, two, three, four—everything has to fall in place. There's just no going back," says Wayne Prasertong, president of Art Wayne Marketing Inc., Monrovia, Calif. That means you have to keep moving and accept limitations, just as you expect from the vendor. You'll probably have to choose from standard styles and processes and may have to forgo seeing a proof.

ï Keep the artwork simple. Be sure to check the quality of your art files and send a mock-up if you don't have time to see a proof.

ï Look for vendors who specialize in quick turnaround. "We provide different types of bags for distributors who need bags in a hurry," Prasertong says. "Toward the end of last year, I had another job in which the customer called on Christmas Eve. They wanted the bags shipped on the 29th, with Christmas in between. And we got them done."

Working on a tight deadline, Art Wayne Marketing Inc., Monrovia, Calif., provided this bag to Sunrise Identity, a Woodinville, Wash., firm that works with Microsoft Corp. The software giant used the bag at a launch event.