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method is being used for shipment, etc.
Send a copy to your customer.
c. Cancel your original order and confirm in
writing. Get your costs from the factory
noted in writing. Confirm any costs in
writing to the customer.
Follow Up With All Parties
a.
Factory apology letter:
Yes! The honor-
able factory principals will support this
and probably offer this. You need to email
them on what you want them to say and
start from there. This may not help you,
but you owe it to yourself to keep your-
self whole.
b.
Your apology to your client:
How and
what you say depends on your relationship.
c.
Offer to apologize to client’s boss.
Everyone has someone to whom they
report. “Fall on your sword” and you may
save your relationship with that client-
buyer.
The Bottom Line
There’s a legal term called “making some-
one whole.” In other words, a failure to deliver
what the buyer ordered (or contracted for) is
like removing a piece that makes it impossible
for them to succeed. It doesn’t matter to the
customer who is responsible. The customer
buys from you.
We all know that the missing part could
be the right item, the right imprint color,
the right number of imprint colors, the
right item color, the right delivery date, the
right delivery location, the right quantity
and so on.
We have to find the solution to keep
“whole” in the eyes of our clients or soon they
will be someone else’s clients.
There are a lot of pieces to completing a
successful project. One missing piece can ruin
it and put you in breach of contract. So, legal-
ities aside, you want to treat your client as
you want to be treated, so explore all options
to make them whole again.
We all want to think we have a true part-
nership with our clients and factories. Heavy
sigh—it’s not always the case. Perhaps it’s
rarely the case. Still, we are an industry based
on trust that we all will do what we say we
will do. Stuff happens every day on the dis-
tributor and supplier sides to turn projects
upside down. Clients too are human. They
miss our deadlines, change their minds, fail to
pay, and fail to honor their own proof
approvals and so on.
Our P.O.s to factories are contracts.
If something goes wrong, enforcing the
contract can be painful, time consuming
and immensely costly. Sometimes we
cannot enforce the contract because shipping
docks are closed or snow prevents the ship-
ping company’s airplane from taking off.
And yes, sometimes the factory fails us
no matter how many times we confirmed
the order.
Our industry is filled with many tremen-
dously creative and resourceful professionals
who no doubt have solutions I’ll never be
aware of. But I hope that these tips will help
someone else along the way.
Dan Ahern, JD, is principal
at distributor Fog City
Marketing, a division of
Proforma Albrecht Co., in
Corte Madera, California.
GROW
58 •
PPB
• MARCH 2015