"Once I was managing a massive direct mail campaign. The order was for 25,000 mailers to be postmarked within a two-week period before Black Friday. After the order went out for the first 10,000 units, I got a call from the printer that their printing facility would be out of order for at least one week due to power supply issues. This would've set us back so much that we would only be able to send the mailers out after Black Friday, which would completely defeat the campaign's purpose. I asked the printer if they could refer us to another printer that would be able to handle the volume, but the only contact they had was a few states away and required way more lead time than we had at that point. So, I called a few smaller printers and asked what their maximum capacity was for short turnaround times. In the end, I worked with three different places to fulfill the order. Although it cost us 10% more than our original printer, we made the time perfectly. Plus, we were able to get extra credit from them."
