The job of a contract decorator is different from that of a full service supplier. The burden of ordering garments has been taken over by you, the distributor, so that you can secure the best price on your blank garments. Along with that benefit comes the burden of placing the actual order and dealing with the problems that sometimes arise when wholesalers mess up. We wish it didn’t happen, but it does. At Boardwalk, we will do our best to help you solve those problems when they arise. But you have to order your garments in a timely manner. Otherwise, we can’t help.

Here are some thoughts on the ordering process:

Wholesalers and Manufacturers

We have the good fortune to be located in the Northeastern United States in Erie, PA. Typically, most all major wholesalers are no more than a 2-day shipment from our warehouse, with many major suppliers only 1-day away. SanMar, NES/Broder/Alpha, Heritage Sportswear, S&S Wholesale, Bodek and Rhodes, Virginia T’s, ACC, Staton Wholesale and One Stop are all within 1-2 days shipping time. If you’d like advice on the best places to order garments that must arrive in a short period of time, please give us a call.

Order Early

Compared to the 1980’s and 1990’s, wholesalers have gotten much better at shipping orders correctly. In years past it was common to contact wholesalers and ask them fix an error on an order – and ask them to pay for the shipping to get the missing items to us on time. Rather than pay for the shipping, the wholesalers improved their service. Nowadays, most orders arrive complete. It’s an odd occasion when they don’t.

But it DOES happen.

Because the burden is yours to deal with any mistakes made by the wholesaler, we suggest you give yourself plenty of time to deal with any problems that may arise. When your order arrives we will count the items. If your order is short, we will either wait a day to see if a missing box arrives, or we will call you if there are only a few missing pieces. Once you find out the order is short, you have to call the wholesaler and have the missing items shipped out. Ordering and waiting for the garments to arrive will add several more days to the process and could result in a delay in producing your order – and a missed ship date. And all this tends to make a mess of our production schedule.

For your customers sake, and for ours too, please order the garments early.

Documentation

When our friendly UPS driver shows up at our warehouse door with a truck full of boxes that he can’t wait to unload, we have quite a daunting task on our hands. We have to sort all the boxes, verify that each shipment is complete and match the shipment to the actual Purchase Order we have in house. It is very, very helpful to us if you ask the wholesaler to put a Reference Number or Name on the Shipping Label and/or Packing Slip. For example, a shipping label from the supplier might look like this:

ABC Distributorship
Ref: PO #12345
c/o Boardwalk Marketing
4726 Pittsburgh Avenue
Erie, PA 16509

The PO Number referenced should be the PO Number of the order you sent to US, not the wholesaler. If you don’t want to use the PO Number as a reference, simply use the “Reference Name” for the order. That’s the common name you use to refer to the order, such as “Bob’s Bar and Grill Hats” or “XYZ Industries 5K shirts.” Anything that helps us associate the items we receive to the Purchase Order you sent to us.

Shipping Address for Blank Garments

Boardwalk Marketing
4726 Pittsburgh Avenue
Erie, PA 16509