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You may have noticed we ship out our custom guitar picks really, really quick. We are the fastest by far in the business. Most of our competition takes anywhere from 2-8 weeks to ship a custom order out. So, why are we able to print our picks so fast? Well, we have been doing this for 30 years, and have managed to streamline everything down to a quick and efficient process. Also this is our full time job and we have lots of dedicated professionals working at it.! A lot of our competitor websites are individuals working out of their home/ garage, and most of them have a different full time job. So, since they have so much other stuff going on, they tend to have long lead times. So when you are looking for a place to buy your picks from, taking a look at their lead time will let you know how devoted to their company they are.

A lot of our competitors also have a long turn-around time so that they can charge your card and hold onto the funds for that whole time… which is less than ideal. So basically if they take 4 weeks to ship your picks, that is 4 weeks that you have paid for those picks. At Clayton, Inc. even though we don’t take long to ship most orders, we don’t even charge your card until the picks have shipped. So you never have to worry about that!

There are some exceptions to our 48 hour shipping window though. It does not include weekends or holiday. Also, if we have to contact you regarding your artwork, then the 48 hour window starts over again once we are able to place your order into production. We will not rush your order through to make the time window if it means hurting the quality of the final product.

Here are the most common problems that can slow your order down:

#1: Too small of text – This by far is #1! When you are designing your pick in our designer, there is a small replica of your design in actual size in the lower left area of the window. If you can’t read it there, then you don’t want to submit the artwork, because you won’t be able to read it on the pick. If we think your text or graphic is too small, we will contact you and put your order on hold status because we want to make sure your text or images are clear and visible on the pick.

#2: Wrong selection of pricing – If you accidentally upload a full color graphic, but select single color pricing and submit the artwork as single color, your order will often get placed on hold so that we can verify with you if you want a graphic artist to turn the image all to one color, or if you want to upgrade your pricing.

#3. Complex artwork – If you haven’t already noticed we deal with a lot of complex artwork. It takes work to make it look good. We may do a run of your picks and decide they don’t quite look right, so the graphic artists will revisit the image, and order a re-print of the job until it looks good. Artwork like this may take up to a week to ship out. Also some-times artwork that contain over-bleeds can take a little longer as well.

#4. Out of stock material- This is really rare, but on occasion, we will be out of stock on a certain gauge of material, which can cause a delay. We notify our customers of this delay and always offer that they can switch to a different gauge or material if they are in a rush.

#5. Specialty Picks – We have a few specialty picks that don’t fit in the 48 hour time frame. These include Black Raven (4-6 weeks), Just Text (10 working days) and Colored Pearl (3 weeks). So if you are in a rush, we don’t recommend ordering these materials.

Hope that helps educate you on how we are able to ship fast, and how you can help ensure your order ships out fast. If you want to read more reasons on why you should choose Clayton Custom as your company of choice, please visit Why Choose Clayton.