THE CHALLENGE

Lithocraft was one of two suppliers of children’s carryout cartons for a regional restaurant chain. Both suppliers were responsible for creating the art and running a three month’ supply of cartons.

Our cartons had been in the restaurants for three months and our competitor’s supply was due. We received call from the purchasing manager on a Friday afternoon. “We are in trouble,” he said. Cartons from the other supplier were due a week before and he had just received a call informing him it would be two weeks before they could deliver the cartons. He estimated he had enough cartons to last through Sunday. The purchasing manager said, “I need cartons by Monday morning. Can you help?”


THE SOLUTION

Lithocraft’s normal production schedule on this job would be a two weeks assuming we had stock and an okayed proof. To help our client, we basically had two days to produce the cartons…and this was over a weekend.

Our first step was to check our board inventory, but usually we keep a large inventory on raw board stock on our floor and almost always have enough to get a customer out of trouble.

We did have stock to run the cartons and received permission to use standing plates. We printed the cartons on Friday night and the job was finished early Saturday morning. We immediately die cut the cartons and then glued them on Sunday. We put the cartons on our truck and delivered them first thing Monday morning.


THE CONCLUSION

It’s not unusual for Lithocraft to face “emergency” opportunities. Being able and willing to adopt a customer’s problem as our own problem has earned us preferred vendor status with many of our customers.