It’s November, and there’s no time like the present to rev up your business for the gift-giving season! In this month’s Printwear Magazine, I’ve prepared a Seasonal Survival Guide to help you manage the incoming storm of embroidery orders while you maintain readiness for all of the wacky seasonal specialties your shop must decorate between now and the end of the year.

I know it might seem like blasphemy to be stitching gifts before turkey day, but others have been neck-deep in mantel-clogging stocking sets since the end of September. For those of us who haven’t felt the first flurries of that order blizzard, the best chance we have to keep seasonal schedules running smoothly is to take action now.

Start thinking about whats going under that tree; these embroidered ornaments are great non-sized gift items you can make in an emergency from on-hand materials if you worry about what’s going on it.

If you’d like to see all the lovely pictures, largely provided by my wonderful embroidery friend, Carolyn Cagle of Strikke Knits (who used my designs to tackle some of her own holiday madness once upon a time) check out the full article over at Printwear and catch my added tips on embroidering on textures, metallic threads, stockings, and what to do with heirloom substrates.

For those of you skimmers who just want the skinny on holiday scheduling, here are the highlights:

Start Seasonal Selling Now

Send a simple sales pitch with easy-to-decorate items to your usual customers. Offer a discount or benefit like a free item for the purchaser, or free direct shipping if orders are submitted within a week of the pitch date: Make the ordering process easy, and you could turn tardy customers into your first finished (and billed!) gift orders.

If your customers want cut and sew pieces like these from Strikke Knits, you need to start early.

Predict and Publish your Lead Time (Accurately)

You know (or at least you should know) how much time the average order takes to move from primary contact to packaged product: be transparent with potential customers about delivery dates, and update your schedule as production times tighten. Publish it in the open; everyone loves an early delivery, but no one likes to be promised a delivery date that can’t be honored. Leave room for your best customers who submit late if you must, but consider instituting rush fees. If you’ve been honest, you’ll need that money to keep on crews for overtime, or at least to console yourself as you work into the wee hours to fulfill off-schedule orders.

Be Ready to Redirect

The ideal decoration can’t always be managed in time for holiday deadlines. When dates can’t budge, compromise comes from production time or shipping time. Be ready with alternatives: quicker decoration methods, easily decorated gift items, contract decorators for overflow, or even gift certificates. Your ready solutions put you in the creative consultant role, and though your potential customer may decline, they’ll understand your options for the next time they order and see you as a problem solver that made an effort on their behalf.

You need a same-day fully embroidered photographic patch set on a sub-shoestring budget? Let me tell you all about sublimation!

Set a Cut-off Date

You’ll eventually run out of capacity to fill orders for events:  Start promoting a reasonable deadline by which orders must be placed in order to deliver by the 24th. You may take orders after it passes, but you want to give the date a sense of urgency to encourage customers to get orders submitted in time. It’s better to be seen making an exception than to miss a delivery. Establish the date and make it public. People may not love the bad news, but reasonable customers will appreciate that your honest approach doesn’t waste their time or give them false hope.

Never underestimate the power of a faux ugly sweater print to soften the blow of the deadline announcement.

In the end, the most important aspect of holiday scheduling is honesty. Be honest with yourself about the time it takes to get things done. Be honest with your customers about when they can have things in-hand and what alternatives are available when you can’t make their requests happen reasonably. Be honest with your staff about important commitments and the expectations on your shop. If you can do all that and stick with the promises you make, you’ll be sure to establish yourself as a gifting guru for this season and the seasons to come.