Images_Digital_Edition_June_2019

www.images-magazine.com 46 images JUNE 2019 T here are plenty of good reasons to consider outsourcing: receiving an order large enough to outstrip the capabilities of your equipment or that doesn’t make sense for your production schedule; customer requests that require a decoration technique with which you are unfamiliar or requires equipment you don’t have; or work that requires a skill you don’t possess or that you and your staff are still learning. Far from simply a last resort, outsourcing has become a regular part of doing business thanks to our increasingly connected world filled with remote workers, drop-shipping and global production. That said, there are risks associated with relinquishing control and relying on others to fulfil critical tasks or production. Here are my three tips to make the process of outsourcing simpler and safer for your business. Build a dream team Don’t wait to seek out production partners until you have jobs on the line. By identifying key areas now where having back-ups and resources will help you better serve your customers, you can start proactively recruiting your dream team ahead of time. For embroidery-only shops, you may look for a garment printer, small shops may look for a larger producer for those high-count orders, and larger, corporate-focused shops may look for boutique decorators who do one-off custom work that requires personalisation or alterations. Although it’s good to have a speciality, being ‘the shop that can do anything’, including off-the-wall requests, can secure the core work we want to do most. Just remember, you may have to consult industry communities, communicate with several suppliers and invest in test pieces to make sure you have the quality and service you expect before releasing critical work to a contractor. Outsourcing notes For treatments that require appliqué cutting, it may make sense to contract designs to a company that specialises in appliqué and has cost-saving tools like this laser bridge [Above] Even though most embroiderers can create patches they are a commonly outsourced item. Emblem companies set up to handle just these sorts of orders are more efficient and may have speciality equipment for cutting and edging Erich Campbell provides a stress-free guide to contracting out extra work