Creative Bulletin n.249

These are three copies of The Creative Ambush printed by three different printers in three different cities. Why?

Well, the first supplier had delivery times that were far too slow, and we were running out of stock; the second one delayed us twice and wouldn’t answer the phone; and so… here we are with three 😅.

The unseen side of our work. For Sefirot to exist and operate, it relies on two crucial pillars: production and logistics. The first ensures our tools are physically printed, and the second allows customers worldwide to receive them.

These aren’t digital processes that can be tweaked with a click from afar. They’re tangible, physical tasks—paper has to be sourced and printed, products must be selected, packed, and handed over to couriers—and the problems are equally tangible and often impossible or expensive to fix.

Managing suppliers. Over the years, we’ve seen it all: hundreds of botched shipments, poorly printed books, delays that cost us clients, machine errors, human errors, careless mistakes, plain bad luck. And often, the supplier’s response is limited to a lukewarm “We’re sorry” paired with excuses.

Just last week, I lost two days arguing, explaining, investigating, and eventually losing my temper (ugh 😅) with three of our suppliers.

The urge to break everything. In moments like these, what I feel like doing (at least personally) is throwing in the towel, tearing up contracts, filing complaints, or… and then it hits me—I have no real leverage. That’s what frustrates me the most. Moving a warehouse is prohibitively expensive. No one can give me back the time wasted retrieving a faulty production run. And on the other side, there’s a contact person managing a hundred other clients like us, if not larger accounts, who cares only up to a point about our situation.

The lesson I’m learning is that, in the end, the fault is always ours.

🌈 Creative takeaway: build a broad supplier network.

If you don’t like the restaurant where you were served bad food and treated poorly, the only solution is to go to another one. And to do that, you need to know all the options in the area.

Whatever your business, you should never find yourself in a position where you have only one supplier, growing complacent with no alternatives. Only then can you confidently say: “You did a bad job? I’ll go elsewhere.”

Too harsh? I’m not sure. Every time I’ve allowed a supplier to do a bad job, they’ve done an even worse one in the future.

In the end, I’d rather be uncompromising and maintain a diverse network of suppliers than be the one making excuses to disappointed clients 💪

With ❤️,
Matteo

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