China banners in your hand thanks to HFE Signs
18th December 2014
We’ve just received a shipping container full of PVC banner material
A lot of our customers ask the same question. How can we consistently offer competitive prices which outshine the competition, especially when we are serving up superior products. Surely there’s a catch somewhere?
The answer is simple. We make sure it costs us less to produce the banners and importing the raw materials in the first place plays a big part. It means that we can set our prices low and offer discounted prices such as free delivery when customers order two or more banners.
During the busy Christmas period, we were awaiting a special delivery and it wasn’t Santa coming on his reindeer from Lapland. Instead, a big lorry arrived at our headquarters in Burton-upon-Trent with a shipping container full of material needed to produce banners fresh from Shanghai.
Importing the banner material from the Chinese capital is a no-brainer considering that the production and importing costs are as low as we can find globally, especially for bulk orders.
The shipping container on this occasion was twenty feet long and jam-packed to the rafters with PVC banner material. It’s a banner-lover’s dream and we spent a few seconds gazing lovingly at our wonderful new stock.
However, time was of the essence considering that HFE Signs will incur charges if we don’t get a shift on and ensure that the banners are unloaded from the shipping containers within three hours.
Therefore, it was all hands to the pump as we manually set about our task of lugging the heavy rolls of PVC banner from the container and into our safe and secure storage facility.
It’s a great team-bonding exercise and the vigorous unloading certainly kept us warm in the chilly outdoors, with the Christmas period actually an ideal time to be stocking up on PVC banners to make sure we can cope with bulk orders well into the New Year.
We pride ourselves on the fact that we have never run short of stock when it comes to PVC banners or any other products across the range, making sure that another order is placed with our Shanghai people well in advance of the cupboard running bare.
We generally have very large stock at the point of re-order and intend to keep it that way, even if the growth of the business means we have to rescale accordingly and increase our order of banners each time.
Perhaps next time there will be two shipping containers arriving from China and we’ll have to call on a few favours to ensure we can get the banners unloaded in time.
The actual value of the container is around £40,000 and the rolls vary in weight between 20kg and 80kg, with the majority falling into the latter category. The three-hour time slot ensures that there is no slouching as we will otherwise be charged at £150 per hour!
So when you place your next order with HFE Signs, you will now know the exact process involved to ensure you get banners at cheap prices and in a very timely fashion.
