Everyone has heard about the supply chain problems currently roiling commerce around the globe. The media likes to hype up the impact: worker shortages and container ships in a weeks-long queue off the coast of Los Angeles will impact everything from the cost of your Thanksgiving turkey to the availability of Christmas presents for your kids, as well as making more mundane things like gasoline and toilet paper more expensive. It’s certainly a very real and substantive issue, but one that DALLAS PRINTING has been able to effectively manage thus far in its business. The biggest impact that we have seen so far is a delay in obtaining some stock items. We’ve been told that some of the paper mills shifted part of their production capacity to toilet paper, paper towels, and cardboard – higher margin products that had increased demand during the pandemic. The paper mills have placed the paper merchants (our suppliers) on allocation, limiting their ability to obtain the quantities of products needed by commercial printers as demand for printed materials has increased. Reduced paper manufacturing capacity has led to restrictions on ordering and subsequent shortages of paper. Overseas paper suppliers (who provide a large quantity of coated papers, such as gloss cover and text) have been adversely impacted by coronavirus in their workforce, as well as delays in getting their shipments unloaded in southern California. Fortunately, DALLAS PRINTING has relationships with a number of suppliers, which has helped minimize any impact to our operations and our clients. We’ve been able to keep the presses running!
Last Friday was an example of being able to successfully manage supply chain constraints – both internal (production capacity – equipment, skilled employees, and logistics) and external (materials). We finished up and mailed a marketing campaign going to almost 12,000 people (7 components in each mailpiece – outer envelope, personalized address card, personalized customized letter (segmented into 11 different target marketing groups), personalized form, 12-panel folded marketing piece, die-cut sticker sheet, and reply envelope). The marketing campaign had been weeks in detailed planning and execution. Also on Friday, we printed 30,000 food labels for a client who made an initial inquiry around 5:00 p.m. on Thursday – a complete turnaround on this project in 24 hours! We also finished and shipped over 150 sets of business cards and marketing cards nationwide for an order received on Wednesday. And, we finished a full complement of “routine”, bread and butter printing projects. Not a bad day’s work. How can Dallas Printing help you succeed?