Rush Orders For The Unexpected Moments 

Did you mean to send an email, but it got left in your Draft Folder?  Is it Tuesday, and your race is on Saturday, and there is no way you can just tell all the participants that their shirts aren’t coming anymore?  Be Branded made it happen.  Did you lose the awards delivered to you two weeks ago in your massive staging warehouse, and now you need a replacement order to send those awards directly to the participants after the race is finished? Be Branded made it happen.  Do you need some butter mints in precisely one week because another supplier failed to come through for you, and now you are hoping for a miracle?  Be Branded made it happen.  Do you need some backdrops sent to Hawaii, and your team has so many cooks in the kitchen that by the time all approvals come through, it will be crunch time?  Be Branded made it happen.  Rush orders are never intentional.  Having a supplier that you can depend on in those times of need.  Don’t trust the timelines displayed on random online websites.  At Be Branded, we work with those same suppliers, and in the 11 years that we have been doing business, we have missed a rush job’s deadline ONCE.  One time in 11 years is a pretty excellent track record.  I guess you can’t win them all, but we are pretty close to Be Branded when it comes to rush orders!

What Items Qualify For Rush Orders?

The answer here is it depends.  This is a moving target, depending on the time of year.  Sometimes, suppliers can do more products through their rush line, and sometimes, they have to pull back the available options that qualify for the rush.  Some printing processes can be rushed, and others can’t be.  The best thing to do is reach out to Be Branded with your project and the timeline.  From there, we will strategize with you to develop the best and closest solution to your original idea.  Sometimes, it will be precisely what you wanted, and other times, you will have to change to a different product to accomplish the rush order.

How Fast Can I Ship a Rush Order?

Rush orders through 2019 and 2023 and moving forward are two completely different beasts.  In the pre-Covid Era, standard orders could typically be shipped within one week after placing an order and delivered within two weeks quickly.  Nowadays, the standard production time on promotional products is more in line with two and a half weeks on average plus additional transit time, but it is getting quicker as processes regulate closer to the pre-COVID times.  Now, how fast can Be Branded ship a rush order?  The answer is it depends on the product.  Can water bottles, pens, and other products ship quickly within 2-3 business days?  Yes, there are.  In 2023, some butter mints were ordered on a Monday and delivered that same Friday.  The two ways to expedite an order that you need to rush on are expediting production and expediting transit time.  If something says it can ship within 24 hours, that doesn’t mean within 24 hours.  It means that after you submit the order, the supplier does a mockup, and you approve the proof before a designated cutoff time by the supplier, THEN that product will ship during their next business day.  If that cutoff is at noon MST time and you approve a rush order proof at 11 am MST on Thursday the 10th, it would ship on Friday the 11th and deliver as fast as your selected transit time.  If the same scenario plays out and you approve it on Thursday the 10th at 2 pm MST with a 12 pm MST cutoff, then that product would not ship out until Monday the 14th.  Screen-printed apparel can usually ship finished products within about one week if a rush is needed, but only between January and August.  As timelines approach the Holidays, those production facilities get filled up, rush options get more scarce, and you’d likely be looking at two weeks for rush and four weeks for standard printing.  To summarize how fast Be Branded can ship a rush order – it depends.  Reach out to us, and we will evaluate your need and use our highly vetted suppliers to see the possibilities of delivering your rush order as fast as possible!

Are There Restrictions on Rush Orders?

Rush orders do typically have restrictions on them.  For most screen-printed handouts, the rush will be limited to a product with one color imprint in one location.  If you want a rush order with two colors of print or more than one location, your order will revert to the default standard timeline.  Sometimes, with rush orders, you will also not see a digital mockup of your logo's placement on the product before the charge goes to production.  To ensure that your rush order is printed correctly, Be Branded will provide a template for your art team to place the vector AI or EPS logo.  In doing this, there will be no questions at the time of production, and your printing expectations will be met.

How Much Does a Rush Order Cost?

Sometimes, customers think a project is a rush project when it isn’t, and there is no additional cost. Usually, with rush orders, there are two primary components of increased cost.  The first is expedited production time.  For your project to jump over approved standard production time projects, there is an entry fee to have the project fast-forward to the finish line.  Rush projects are exceptions to standard processes and have to be micro-managed.  That extra attention has a cost.  What is that cost?  It could be a flat fee of $50.  Some suppliers charge a 10% additional cost for every day, faster than standard production.  There is no standard fee in the Promotional Products Industry for rush orders and the associated costs.  Just know it will be more, and asking for a discount in a rush order situation is likely futile.  At Disney, you must pay additional to use their Genie+ or Lightning Lane passes. In the promo world, you have to pay rush fees. Typically, the only other fee with rush orders is expedited freight costs.  If the standard amount of days to ship your product to the destination is four days, and you want to get it there 1, 2, or 3 days after shipping instead, then there is an additional cost to get it there quicker.  At Be Branded, we balance the cost of rush production and shipping by seeing which is more affordable.  Usually, rush production is more affordable than rush shipping, but we still look at each case to see if rush shipping is more affordable.

Be Branded Can Keep You On Time With Our Rush Order Process 

Although rush orders genuinely need to be the last option, Be Branded can help your company when you have that need. Maybe you forgot to order because there were other priorities.  Maybe you signed up for a last-minute conference, and there was no preventing this rush need.  Maybe your boss just forgot to tell you to order a product, and now it is up to you to be the hero who ensures you aren’t empty-handed.  When a rush order project comes to Be Branded, we will make sure that we ask all pertinent questions in the first conversation.  This way, we can expedite the process to the finish line.  There have been many times where, within the first 15-20 minutes, a phone call to Be Branded that the product is already ordered, off the customer’s plate, and into production.  We aren’t miracle workers, but we are close!  After delivery on a rush project, please thank whichever promotional product provider you use.  Rush is a stressful process, and reputations are on the line.  After doing a rush order with Be Branded, we will also evaluate your calendar of events to see if there is a way to avoid the expense and stress of doing future rush orders.