The Brief
On 25 July 2024, an organisation in the oil and gas industry approached Blanks for Brands to produce 300+ custom polo T-shirts for a five-year anniversary celebration.
The event was scheduled for 1 August, meaning the completed shirts had to be delivered no later than 31 July. That gave us just seven days from engagement to delivery.
The brief also required polos in multiple colours, including approximately 50 plus-size shirts.
The Procurement Challenge
We had only 65 suitable polos in stock. With such a short deadline, international procurement was impossible. We therefore had to source the remaining shirts entirely within Nigeria.
Our existing inventory was supplemented through two relationships we had built over the years:
- A trusted competitor in Lagos with Gildan polo shirts in stock
- A local Kaduna supplier with access to plus-size polos
This allowed us to assemble the required quantities without compromising the garment specification.
Production in Parallel
On 26 July, while procurement was underway, we were already working on the anniversary logo, preparing mockups for approval and finalising the colour and size distribution.
As soon as payment was received, the additional shirts were dispatched from Lagos to Kaduna by air.
We did not wait for the complete order to arrive before starting production. On 27 July, we began printing the 65 shirts already in stock.
The remaining shirts arrived on 28 July. We immediately inspected them for defects and moved them into production.
When Logistics Changed
Our original plan was to move the completed order to Abuja and fly it to Port Harcourt. When no suitable flight was available, that option disappeared.
We immediately activated a contingency logistics plan, using a trusted local transporter with whom we had maintained a relationship for years.
By the evening of 29 July, we had completed production and sent photographs of the finished shirts to the client as proof of delivery readiness. Within the hour, the order was packaged and dispatched.
Delivered Before the Deadline
The client received the completed order on 30 July—one full day before the final delivery deadline and two days before the anniversary event.
They confirmed that the order had been delivered to specification and commended the way the project had been handled.
The Result
The project demonstrated what happens when procurement, production and logistics operate as one coordinated system.
We did not have all the stock when the order arrived. We did not have the luxury of waiting for the complete shipment before production. And when the original logistics plan failed, we did not lose time looking for a perfect replacement.
We activated the next solution and kept moving.