I often see customers frown, sometimes openly, and sometimes covertly, when we quote them a price for embroidery. I can usually imagine what’s going through their mind. “You want how much just for a little thread?” or “How long can it take to sew a few stitches on my shirt?”
Understandably most of our customers have no concept of what it takes to get a “good” design into the machine and ready to sew on their garment. But that’s OK. How would they know unless someone explained it to them? Let’s face it, if they could do it themselves they wouldn’t be in your shop in the first place.
Every embroidery business undoubtedly has its own formula for calculating fees. Ultimately they are all geared toward realizing a fair profit for services rendered and recovering the costs of investments. No one wants to work for nothing and embroiderers are certainly no exception. We all believe our prices are fair and well in line with what the industry charges as a whole. In fact, some of our prices may well be below the norm for similar work elsewhere. Whatever we charge we need to make a profit or we will soon be out of business. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes before any garment can be embellished with an embroidery design. Let’s take a look at the process.
As with most businesses, there are certain tools required to perform the work. Machine embroidery is no exception. No embroidery design is worth the disk space it takes up if we don’t have an embroidery machine. Embroidery machines vary from basic home machines to multi-head commercial machines. If we’re doing embroidery commercially, most likely a home machine won’t get the job done. At the very least we’ll need to look at a single head commercial machine.
The initial investment for such a machine can easily run well into the thousands of dollars. A basic entry level commercial machine would cost in the neighborhood of $7,000.00 or $8,000.00, possibly more. To that we must add any accessories or components needed to actually put the machine in service. Not all machines come equipped with everything necessary to become productive right out of the box. We may need a floor stand, additional hoops, or specialized hat hoops designed for embroidering caps. We also must consider delivery and setup charges, if any, and supplemental training may be required. These items and more can add hundreds of dollars to the final cost of the embroidery machine.
Now that we’ve made the initial investment in our embroidery machine, are we ready to embroider? Not hardly. That’s just the beginning. Now we need to invest in thread. The thread that our hypothetical customer thought to himself about is actually quite expensive. Most small spools of top quality embroidery thread cost $5.00 to $6.00 each. Assuming we would like to have an adequate selection of colors for the customer to choose from, we’d most likely purchase at least 50 to 100 spools of thread to seed our stash. We’d want metallic thread too. Our customers like it and they request it. Top quality metallic thread can cost two to three times what a spool of regular embroidery thread would cost. We also need to purchase bobbin thread and needles. All of these items are consumable items that must be restocked as needed. They’re not simply a “one time” investment like our machine.
We’re still not quite ready to embroider. A few more things are required before we can lay down the first stitch. We’ve got our machine, our thread, our bobbins, and our needles, but we need something called stabilizer or backing. When we get ready to hoop a garment for embroidery we need stabilizer to put behind the fabric to give it some stability. Since there are many different types of stabilizer/backing for various applications, we need to stock several types and weights in our shop. We must be sure we have the type needed for the project we are about to undertake. No single stabilizer is appropriate for every application. Sometimes we need toppings too, so we need to stock them as well.
OK, we’ve got our machine, our thread, our bobbins, our needles, and our stabilizer. Surely we’re ready to start embroidering now. Well, not exactly. We don’t have any designs to embroider yet. Designs have to come from somewhere. We can’t upload a graphic image to our machine and tell it to sew. It just doesn’t work that way. The art work must first be converted to an embroidery design that includes stitch pattern instructions our machine can understand.
There are basically four options open to us for getting the embroidery designs we need. There are some free designs that can be downloaded from the internet, but the choices may be limited. The quality of the designs may not meet our standards either. Unless we can find exactly what our customers are looking for we will be unable to accommodate them.
We can purchase stock designs from digitizers that offer them for sale, but we may not be able to find exactly what we need there either. The quality may be better, but it’s unlikely we’ll be able to find a customer’s logo or personalized text for sale anywhere.
A third option would be to hire a digitizer to custom create our designs for us. This is a good option if you can find a digitizer that creates quality designs at a fair price. Turn around time is important too. How long will it take to get the completed design to you?
The cost of the designs in both options two and three would ultimately have to be passed on to the customer in one form or another. Either we would charge them a flat design charge, or we would factor it in with the final cost of each embroidered item.
The fourth option would be to create our own, but before we can do that we need two more very important items – a computer and digitizing software. If we don’t already own a computer, or one that is adequate for running our digitizing software, we will need to purchase one. An old computer that lacks the necessary power to run graphic intensive programs just won’t get the job done. We’ll also need a good color printer for printing our color work sheets and design templates, and a scanner for scanning in customer provided art work.
Not only is the specialized digitizing software we’ll need extremely power hungry, but it’s also very expensive. Most of the popular digitizing software packages available today range anywhere from $1,200.00 to $1,500.00 or more. The learning curve for this software can be quite steep. Digitizing is an art that takes a considerable amount of time to master. Specialized training may be required before we can turn out acceptable, high quality designs. Just purchasing the software doesn’t make us a good digitizer.
Assuming that we have chosen option four above, we are now able to create the exact design our customer wants. This specialized service can take many hours to complete depending on the complexity of the design. Each and every stitch must be placed in exactly the right place to recreate the art work provided by the customer. Among other things, we must attempt to match colors, determine the correct stitch type, and set the proper sewing order for each segment.
As I mentioned earlier, we don’t want to work for nothing. We should be compensated for the time we spend creating designs for customers. It’s no different, in theory, than a customer commissioning an artist to create a unique painting or sculpture.
Once the design has been completed, it must then be tested on the machine before it can be sewn on the customer’s garments. But, before we can do that, we must take the time to load the proper thread colors on our machine. Once the design has been tested, any problems that we discover must be fixed and the design re-tested. When we’re finally satisfied the design is complete, we’re ready to begin work on our project.
The average embroidery design usually consists of about 8,000 to 10,000 stitches. Larger and more complex designs can be much more. Theoretically, on a 1000 stitch per minute machine it should take about 8 to 10 minutes to sew out. Average sewing time, however, is like average miles per hour in your car. Sometimes you can go fast, but there are times when you have to slow down on the curves. If there are color changes to be made, sewing time increases accordingly. In reality, sewing an average size design may take as long as 15 to 20 minutes per garment to complete. That may or may not include the time required to mark, align, and hoop the garment. Additional time is also required to un-hoop the garment, inspect it, remove the stabilizer, and trim any excess threads.
Like most professions, we do eventually find ways to shorten some of the steps in the process. As long as quality is not compromised, we look for shortcuts that aid us in completing the project in the least amount of time. The sooner we can complete one project and move on to the next, the better off we are. The old saying “Time is Money” certainly applies here.
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the time we spend with each customer in the initial stages of each project. We help them with design ideas, make size and placement recommendations, assist with garment choices, and many other things that are too numerous to mention. There are always special cases too. We’re often asked to do the impossible, and somehow we find a way to do it.
I’m sure there are a few things in the process that I failed to mention, but the basics are pretty well covered. Quality machine embroidery is not a push-button affair. Giving customers a product they are proud to display takes time and a lot of effort. Attention to detail must be maintained from our first meeting with the customer to the final stage of bagging up their completed garments for pickup or delivery.
We know our customers expect high quality embroidery and we intend to give it to them, but high quality embroidery comes with a price. When you factor in all the underlying costs and efforts that go into it, top quality machine embroidery isn’t such a bad deal after all. If it is done right it looks great, it sparkles, and it draws a lot of attention from passersby - just what our customer wants.
While we don’t go through this entire process each and every time, many of these steps are required for every design we sew. Machine embroidery is a highly specialized field that requires highly specialized training and equipment. It doesn’t come cheap. Neither should the embroidery.
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