Everybody’s Working for the weekend…

Everybody’s Working for the weekend…

Greetings everyone.  It is hard to believe Halloween is right around the corner.  It seems like just yesterday I was wishing you all a Happy New Year.  The first 9 months of the year have been great for Qdigitizing and as we move toward the busy 4^th quarter we want to remind you about our service hours. 

As we get closer to the holidays deadlines seem to compress and many more of you have time sensitive projects.  Qdigitizing understands and our production facility is open 24 hours a day, 6 days a week to help you meet those deadlines.  YOU should note we are 100% closed on Sunday so staff (and yes, ownership too) can spend quality down time with their families.  Even though production is open on Saturday customer service is not.  Qdigitizing is primarily a Business to Business service.   We will receive more orders and emails from 6:00am  to 9:00am Monday morning than we will on Saturday and Sunday combined.  Because of this it does not make sense for us maintain full staffing levels on the weekend.  But with that said each of you should know,  crest/hat size digitizing and simple art orders placed on Friday will be returned on Saturday (at no additional cost) but you must specifically request this service.  Our web order forms include a “Saturday” request when placing orders on Friday.  If you email your order in, be certain to request Saturday delivery if you need it. 
On the weekends I am constantly monitoring email and will always help when and where I can.  But after 1:30 (eastern) on Saturday my production facility closes and does not re-open until Sunday night at 11:00pm (Eastern).   These operational hours allow us to deliver Friday and weekend orders for Monday morning.  However, because of this from Saturday afternoon (1:30 Eastern) through Monday morning Qdigitizing is only able to provide service in a very limited capacity.  

On a similar note I feel it is important for Qdigitizing to reemphasize an important point.  Our standard delivery for crest/hat size digitizing and simple art orders is Next Business Day.  For us, Next Business Day means before Customer Service closes on the next business day after you place your order.  To that end it is important to note customer service hours are Monday – Friday 9:00am through 8:00pm Eastern time.   While more than 90% of our orders are delivered within 28 hours if you need a design more rapidly than this you can request Same Day Service (for crest/hat digitizing only) up until 4:00pm (eastern) M-F.  At this time we do not offer Same Day Service for any art project or jacket back digitizing.   Additionally, while we try to accommodate rush orders we cannot guarantee delivery inside our standard service.  We do not have a delivery level in-between Same Day and Next Day.  If you are pressed for a deadline I strongly recommend you request Same Day Service or get your order in as early as possible and then reach out by phone to Steve or Flora and give them a heads up as to the urgent nature of your order.

Qdigitizing takes your deadlines seriously.  We know you do too.  The most important thing you can do to help us expedite your order is to send us clean art and complete instructions.  We do everything we can to avoid putting orders “On Hold” but if we do not have adequate information or a quality image we cannot start your project.  Furthermore, our internal clocks do not start until we have all the information we need to start an order.   We promise to hold up our end of the deal but in order for us to do that we need you to partner with us and provide as much information as you can.  At a minimum we need to know the following for all orders be it art services or embroidery digitizing:

1.  We need quality source art.
2.  Tell us how big you want your finished image to be
3.  Tell us what image will either be printed or embroidered on.
4.  Tell us the format you require your design and if you know it, the version number of the software you use.  (Version is more important for art than embroidery.)

If you can give us just those four things more than 8 out of 10 times we will return your design to you on the first pass without any editing required.  We track this metric internally and we know it to be true.

If you send us art that looks like this
and your complete instructions are L/C  you can expect editing will be required more than 50% if the time.  Additionally, if your instructions are that brief (you would be surprised how often we get this) then there is a very good chance your order will be put on hold which will further delay your order.  We aren’t trying to be mean, we simply need more information in order to do a good job for you.

 More than 75% of the orders we put on hold are because a customer is requesting a design at too small a size to accommodate the text in the design.  Your text is what drives the minimum size of your design.  This conversation can get very in-depth so for this conversation let’s keep it simple.  For the most part the minimum size required to form a quality satin stitch letter is 4mm or 3/16”.   However, the type of fabric can impact this significantly.  Additionally, that is for a simple Arial type font, no serifs or fancy text elements.  Fancy fonts require even more size to embroider nicely. 

A design like this can be embroidered much smaller than a design like this.  

It is all about the text.  In the Rutherford logo it would be impossible to provide a quality job with the design being any less than 6.5” wide if all text in the logo is to remain as represented in the art.  Art like this requested at 3.5” wide will generate a Hold Message  100% of the time.   For the most part you can get about 18 letters on a line of text and keep your design to 4” wide.  While there is no rule about how wide a left chest design can be most of our customers do not like to see designs longer than 4.5” and anything more than 5.5” is almost universally panned.

Understanding the limitations of the embroidery medium can take time but the better you understand embroidery the more you will help yourself and better serve your customers.   Qdigitizing is here to help you work through the challenges.  If you  ever have a question about a logo feel free to send it to us before you place the order.  Myself or Flora will be more than happy to discuss the design with before it can become a problem for you.

If any of you have suggestions for a BLOG piece or would like to contact me you can send an email to steve.freeman@qdigitizing.com.

I look forward to hearing from you all soon.

Thanks,

Steve