The four-week runway from booking to doors.

Designs get finalized, proofed at print size, and test-pressed on the actual garment colors. This is also when personalization rules are set — name fonts, monogram styles, patch menus — because every option added later ripples through production files. Rush timelines are possible, but artwork is the step that punishes compression most.

Headcount converts to a blank order with a size curve — not an even split; adult events skew L/XL, family events need youth sizes. Ordering here leaves room to fix a supplier shortfall without paying rush freight. For Las Vegas and nationwide events, this is also when we book the shipping so blanks arrive before the crew does.

The station sheet goes to your venue: footprints, the 20A circuit for DTF, table counts, and load-in needs. Convention centers get their electrical orders and dock windows; ballrooms confirm freight elevators and setup times. If the floor plan needs to move, this is the cheap week to move it.

Transfers are produced and counted, blanks arrive and get binned by size, and the crew gets a run sheet: arrival, setup complete, doors, service window, teardown. Setup finishes a full hour before doors so the last hour is for dressing the station, not troubleshooting it. Day-of, your only job is pointing at the floor tape. If your date is inside four weeks — ask anyway; we'll tell you honestly what the compressed version costs and risks.

The four weeks buy a rhythm you can watch on event day. First thirty minutes: light traffic while guests orient — the crew uses it to pace-set and adjust the display. The middle hours run at station speed, with a restock pass every hour or so as bins thin out; guests never see the reserve stock, they just never see an empty rack either. Final thirty minutes: the crew calls the line — last guests in queue are guaranteed their piece, new arrivals get a warm redirect, and nobody's night ends at a station that shut off mid-promise. Teardown starts only after the last piece is handed over. None of that is improvised; it is the run sheet from week one, executed. What it looks like in a real room is all over the gallery.

Three situations deserve one more week on the front of this runway. Multi-service builds — press plus embroidery plus hat wall — need the extra week for menu design, because what can be printed live is a longer list than most planners expect and choosing well takes a real conversation. Branded corporate garments with legal review need it for the approval loop; counsel does not share your urgency. And convention-center dates need it for exhibitor-services deadlines, where the advance-rate cutoff for power can land five weeks out all by itself. The pattern: complexity lives at the front of the calendar, never the back. Production weeks are fixed; decision weeks are where you buy slack.

The four weeks assume Southern California, where we drive our own gear in a morning. Las Vegas dates add freight lead time — blanks and equipment ship ahead or caravan in, and Strip properties enforce dock reservations that must be booked, not assumed. Nationwide programs push blank ordering to the front of week three so ground freight never turns into air freight. Inside our local coverage, the same calendar compresses gracefully — a three-week local runway is comfortable, and we have run clean two-week turnarounds when the artwork arrived finished. The rule of thumb: every hundred miles of distance costs a day of slack you will want somewhere else, so distant dates should book from the far end of the calendar, not the near one.

The runway has a landing, too. Within a few days you get the closeout: pieces produced by design and size, leftover blanks counted and returned or credited per your call, and any personalization files archived for the next date. Teams running recurring programs — quarterly all-hands, annual galas, seasonal store events — treat that closeout as the first planning document of the next booking, because last event's real numbers beat any estimate. Keep it; the second event on the same data always runs tighter than the first. Size curves stop being estimates, design menus get pruned to what people actually chose, and the blank order lands within a few pieces of reality. By the third booking the timeline above runs itself, which is the quiet goal of the whole system.