I received an email from a new client the week before Christmas. Mary worked for Inland Environment Resources (IER) in Spokane, WA. She told me in her email that Terry Campbell of Central Washington Refrigeration referred her to contact me about getting some trade show marketing merchandise. 

IER was going to have a booth at the Northwest Food Processors show in Portland, OR. on January 17th, 2011. I said that the timeline maybe a tight but because the printing was done in the Midwest we would have rush shipping charges. Mary said that that would not be a problem.

The next issue is that I would need to look at their logo.

After she sent it to me, I knew that there would be a problem with the globe (jpg) in their logo. I tried to convince her that the graphic would work better if we replaced the globe with a solid drop of water. By doing that I could save them money by silk screening the table cloth rather than digitally printing the front and have it sewn to the rest of the blue dyed fabric. I created a comparison to help explain the process (see below). She told me that the owner was happy with their logo and didn't want to change it. I said that it would be no problem for me to recreate their logo.

Photos are always going to be a concern when enlargening and printing.

  Unfortunately, they did not own (or have rights to the photo) the photo. I did some research and located the globe. I explained to her about photography usage rights and purchased a larger file size to work with the dye sublimination printing.

I called and talked to my vendor in Chicago and told him about the timeline. He said that it could all be done (with a little luck). I am always a little nervous about having tight deadlines because there is no room for mistakes. But I gambled for my new client and when I got the package from Chicago I was delightfully pleased with the quality of work that they made for my client. I met with one of IEP's partners (Pete) on Sunday at 2:00pm in my office. He was grateful for me conveniently meeting him on a weekend. And when I got back to the office to look at my emails on Monday morning, I received an email from Mary.

Thank you so much for everything. You have gone above and beyond terrific customer service. If the opportunity arises I will definitely refer any business to you.

Mary

I can only tell you that words like these are my inspiration and the magic words that I strive for to make me better than my competitors.