Peak season does not reward effort. It rewards decisions made in September, when there is time to make them.
Know your capacity as a number
Not "we're pretty busy". A weekly ceiling in the unit your presses actually consume: impressions for screen, prints for DTG, stitches for embroidery, sheets for transfers.
weekly capacity = productive hours x realistic rate per hour
Productive hours means press-running hours, after setups, breaks, meetings and the inevitable interruptions. Most shops are shocked at how much smaller this is than their opening hours. That number is your promise ceiling, and every date you quote past it is a date you are hoping about.
Publish a hard cut-off, then honour it
Work backwards from your dispatch deadline:
| Step | Time |
|---|---|
| Carrier deadline for guaranteed delivery | Fixed date |
| Pack and QC | 1 day |
| Production at peak rate | 5 to 10 days |
| Artwork and setup | 1 to 2 days |
| Blanks in | 3 to 10 days |
| Approval | 1 to 3 days |
| Buffer | 5 days |
Add it up honestly and the cut-off is usually a fortnight earlier than shops like to admit. Publishing the honest date costs you a few late orders. Publishing an optimistic one costs you the reputation you spend the rest of the year earning.
Sequence by setup, not only by date
In normal months, first-in-first-out is fine. At peak, changeover is your enemy. Group jobs that share ink colours, screens, garment colours or hoop setups, then sequence those groups against due dates. Shops that do this find hours a week that were previously spent washing screens.
The constraint: never let sequencing push a job past its promised date. Group within slack, not across it.
Decide your no in advance
Write down, before it starts, what you will decline in peak:
- New customers below a certain order value.
- Designs above a colour count you cannot run efficiently.
- Anything needing a blank you do not stock and cannot get in time.
- Sample and one-off work, deferred to January.
Deciding this in September is a policy. Deciding it in November is a panic, and it will be inconsistent.
Where extra hands actually help
Around the skilled work, not in it. Folding, counting, boxing, labelling, and running blanks are all trainable in an hour and all steal time from your best operators. See hiring your second printer for the permanent version of this decision.
Protect the January bill
Peak season profitability is destroyed by two things: overtime you did not price, and rush jobs you took at standard rates. Your rush fee structure is what stands between a busy December and a profitable one.
Printer's Friend shows committed work against your production window on the production board, so the week that is already full looks full before you promise it. For the numbers to watch while it happens, see print shop KPIs.