Situation
The United States Postal Service was in need of a merchandise partner who could source, manufacture and deliver approximately 633,000 T-shirts. The T-shirts were a key component of a mid-year marketing campaign introducing the new USPS Flat-Rate box. To calibrate the individual elements of the campaign, USPS needed the T-shirts to be delivered ahead of the campaign launch to every postal employee in the United States.
Challenge
The T-shirts had to be U.S.-made and delivered within a six-week window at a competitive price. The shirts would be distributed to nearly 40,000 distinct locations, all of which had different size and quantity needs.
Solution
The size of the order, the abbreviated timeline and the requirement that the shirts be made in the USA removed the opportunity to take advantage of the significant cost-savings that come with importing from BDA's network of preferred factories overseas. However, BDA was indeed able to drive significant cost out by leveraging our considerable buying power to negotiate a savings of more than $250,000 with the manufacturer on a high-quality 6 oz. T-shirt. When it became clear the T-shirt manufacturer was not going to meet the levels of production initially agreed upon, BDA sent an expert in lean manufacturing to the supplier to observe the production process in place. BDA was also on-site to identify a bottleneck at the decorator and keep the project on schedule.
Result
The overwhelming success of the on-time delivery, despite the challenges set forth from the onset of the project were overcome and resulted in a reorder of nearly 70,000 shirts. The same process, pricing, production, T-shirt integrity were all upheld and T-shirts from this re-order, based on the knowledge gained from the first job, were delivered almost a week early.