Every year the Birch team work with a leading, international fashion retailer to produce their in-store sale and seasonal point of sale print. Our team were given a 4 week deadline to get all of their marketing collateral into each branch just before Christmas, ready for the Boxing Day sales and the new season stock launch. It goes without saying that Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for retailers, so we were keen to deliver their POS as quickly as possible in time for all of the great deals for their customers.
To kick start the project, our team read through the retailer’s deployment guidelines to ensure we were thoroughly briefed ahead of production. The guidelines contained complex details covering the many project requirements for the different countries and languages served by the brand. Although the new marketing material had to be applied to most UK and Ireland stores, several units were required to retain the store’s previous branding which required in-depth coordination with UK Head Office and global branding departments.
Once the retailer was happy with the project specification and everything was finalised, our team were scheduled to work on the artwork for the POS. Due to the retailers success across the globe, there were many factors that needed to be considered. There are over 500 price points in two different currencies, covering Women’s, Men’s and Children’s fashion so our team had to make sure we had generated artwork for all departments, currencies and price points. Our team had to be extremely organised with our approach to planning for delivery to ensure all of the POS was counted, and packed as efficiently as possible.
Inevitably, with the Christmas rush things were pushed back slightly and we didn’t receive final approval from their team until the day the items had been initially scheduled to be dispatched. By this point we were into the last working week before Christmas – all materials had to be in stores before Christmas and due to last-minute shoppers the delivery networks were nearly at full capacity.
Our team had four days left to complete the project with over 100,000 individual pieces to be printed, all of which were made up of 700 differing versions and types. As we moved into production, our warehouse team organised a collation point for each store and as soon as the POS was printed, we picked and packed all of the items to minimise any further delays on dispatch date.
Just in the ‘St Nic’ of time (excuse the pun), the final POS production was completed the weekend before Christmas. This left only one delivery day before Christmas Eve, so we made sure that all of the final POS items were packaged over the weekend and despatched for a morning delivery on December 23rd.
Each store received their POS items by Christmas Eve morning, giving them just enough time to dress the stores and prepare for the busy Boxing Day sales!
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