Cheap embroidery machine?

[mimosatexas]

I keep getting requests for less than a dozen embroidered caps, and people always want quick turnaround of course.  I have used half a dozen different embroidery places local and shipped, and everything takes forever and has higher minimums than a lot of people want.  Quality has been all over the place.  I am skeptical I can bring these jobs in house and have it make sense, but a quick craigslist/ebay search brings up a few machines that seem affordable like the following:

http://corpuschristi.craigslist.org/ard/5142733799.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/bfs/5175341208.html

I honestly would probably do less than 100 hats and maybe 50-150 shirts a month in house based on my current outsourced work, but obviously that could grow.  I think a single head is fine, as long as it can do hats as I would continue to outsource larger orders.  I mainly just want to stop the headaches that seem to come from outsourcing small jobs.  I know a handful of other local shops who have the same issues and would gladly accept their jobs as well.

Any thoughts?

[Denis Kolar]

I would not buy any of those.
Janome is not a commercial embroidery machine, and Toyota is old, shortage of parts.

You can find nice Toyota 9000 or some SFW single head for 5-6K.
I would not get anything less than that.

[3Deep]

Besides the machine digitizing software will be your next issue, but then you can always sub that out,  it's hard to say about used machines just looking at them don't mean a thing you have to see this joker sew because it could have problems inside that you can't see, could sew for 20 minutes and stop, could break thread every 2 minutes.  Now if you do buy a cheap used machine I would buy something that I could get service on at a local sewing machine shop etc, the two you posted are pretty well known brands, if I had to pick I would jump on the Toyota machine for the fact it's more of a professional machine.

[mimosatexas]

Good info.  Do any of the home/hobby machines do hats that you know of?  I have much better things I can spend $6k on honestly.

[tonyt79]

We used one of those MB4 machines here in my shop for a few weeks while we were waiting on the delivery of a new machine. I would say they can make you some money but only doing left chest logos. Once it was running right it did pretty good work. But it is not meant to be running all day none stop.

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[larryk]

Save yourself a bunch of time and headaches and just continue subbing those jobs out until you can afford a GOOD machine. It didn't look like any of those cheap machines would even do hats and if they did there is a good chance your customers might not like the results. Good luck with whatever you do decide.

[Homer]

we have 3 toyota 850's..

nicknames per machine:

1)"trim you sonofabitch"
2) "ahh wtf is wrong now?!"
3) "error? again?!"

[ericheartsu]

just send it to fluid. they are in Houston, and typically can turn things within 5-7 business days.

[T Shirt Farmer]

we have 3 toyota 850's..

nicknames per machine:

1)"trim you sonofabitch"
2) "ahh wtf is wrong now?!"
3) "error? again?!"

Thats funny chit

[Denis Kolar]

Let's say, 100 hats and 100 shirts per month.
You will pay off your $6K machine is 3 months. (unless you are using dirt cheap shirts and you price your work dirt cheap)

How is that a big investment???

[jvieira]

Save yourself a bunch of time and headaches and just continue subbing those jobs out until you can afford a GOOD machine. It didn't look like any of those cheap machines would even do hats and if they did there is a good chance your customers might not like the results. Good luck with whatever you do decide.

+1

[Doug B]

  I will also say sub it out UNTIL you can jump into a multi-head machine. I personally
think it WOULD be a waste of money even if it were a better single head opposed to
at least 4-6 heads.

[jvieira]

We subcontract our embroidery. Until late last year we didn't do any embroidery but saw an opportunity and decided to offer services. We've been subcontracting ever since. We get about 3/4 orders a week which is still ~150/200 a year and though of purchasing a cheap embroidery machine just like you did.

What I quickly found is that there's no making money with 1 head. At the very least 2. Better would be 4.
At the cost of a DECENT machine (not even a very good one) and a new employee, it is just not worth it. Unless you have a constant stream of work to keep the machine busy you will not make enough money.

The way I see it, grow your business, get as many orders as you can and when you feel you can buy a 4 head machine and keep it running all day, every day, then buy it. Never before