Off the Cuff: Do You Know Jack?

Beyond the wall that separates your front office from your shop floor lies a treasure trove of information, just waiting for an unscrupulous customer to carry it away.
Nov 19, 2007

By Mark L. Venit, MBA

A prospective customer, let’s call him Jack, calls and wants to send some work your way. But before he does, he’d like to see your facility. You’re used to this request, and you understand Jack’s motivation to check out your place with his own eyes. Eager to secure both his business and confidence, you invite him over.

After touring your operations from the art department and digitizing to production and shipping to seeing your employees working diligently and with a noticeable esprit de corps, Jack is impressed by what he sees, is comfortable with your professionalism, and tells you you’ll be getting a nice chunk of his contract work.

Everything about this encounter is perfectly normal. But You Don’t Know Jack! If you’re smart, this will be Jack’s last visit “beyond the wall.”

Sure, there’ll be exceptions for folks you know well and in appropriate circumstances. But whom do you really know?! Perhaps you recall the Fellowes paper shredders TV commercial, in which a guy walking on the sidewalk talks about identity theft — while he’s rummaging through his neighbor’s trash. When the neighbor drives up, he walks on casually, greeting his neighbor, “Hi, Tom!” who is clueless as to what’s just happened. The last words viewers hear are, “You never know who you can trust.”

Some contract printers and embroiderers allow their contract customers to work freely and directly with staff. Visitors can walk right into digitizing, production and shipping areas. Some might join you at your desk for a hi-hello-how-are-you chat.

But many of you have had to learn the hard way that some of your customers are thieves! And what they steal is the privileged information that belongs to your contract customers: the names and addresses of their accounts! While you’re preoccupied with pressing matters, you’ve got someone you thought you could trust traipsing through your facility, spying shipping labels, designs and work-order forms wherever they can, making mental notes along the way.

Shortly after driving away from your shop, the thief pulls into a parking lot and calls his voice mail or jots down the details of what he just learned, hauling away a potential treasure trove of new prospects in the process.

As a general rule, trade customers shouldn’t be allowed to roam around your shop unescorted. And in most cases, even if they are escorted! In the industry’s most professionally-managed contract apparel decorators, trade customers come in the front door and stay up front. Staff personnel come “up front” to work with them as necessary, and the customers leave by the same front door. (OK, OK, sure, they can drive around back to pick up and drop off sizeable orders.)

The culture of our industry precludes running our companies along the lines of a national security facility. But when it comes to letting customers have the run of your shop, the words they should see on the door to your production and service areas should read: KEEP OUT — Authorized Personnel Only. And you don’t need to say “please.” Your good customers will actually appreciate knowing that their orders and your production of them are treated with integrity and the highest confidentiality.

And this way, you also won’t need to worry about which ones might be dishonest!

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He is also the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can reach him at markvenit@cs.com.

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