How hard is embroidery to learn?

[Prosperi-Tees]

We tend to turn away quite a few orders that are 1-11 pcs. I send out anything larger than 12 which I'm fine with. I just tend to think that if We were able to sew the smaller orders for some of our customers that purchase shirts from us that it will help keep them instead of them having to shop elsewhere. I am thinking only a single head.

Questions are:
How hard is it to learn everything?
What budget machine and software that is the most user friendly?
Do you find that there is money to be made in the 1-11 piece orders?

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of questions because on the surface it seems embroidery is way more complicated than screen printing. Am I wrong?

[3Deep]

I got into embroidery for just a shade under 10K with one machine nothing to brag about but it gets the job done and better yet it has paid for itself already.  The learning curve is up to you on how well you are at reading and picking up on stuff, I self taught myself how to digitize which might not be a good thing but I'm able to trun out some pretty nice stuff and if i get something above my head I send out to the pro's.  I will say Brandt and his crew do some really nice stuff and Dkgraphics as I seem there sew out's, they could really tell you some helpful info.

darryl

[mooseman]

Embroidery is not hard to learn, it is however a little difficult to master. It is like chasing a ghost, there is always a problem that you can never seem to get your hand around.
Never Never  Never take aone piece order you will lose your a$$.
We embroider and screem print (one man operation) my machine runs about 3 - 5 hours a month because there is tons more $$ in screen printing.
. We have a 4 head and a single head machine and only take oeders from our established customers or new customers wanting 12 items or more.
We get about 3 - 5 inquiries a week for one piece opportunities. we used to jump on these now we run like hell because they will tie you up forever for 0 net $.
Example a simple left chest logo usinf a Dakota collectibles design + text we used to quote at $20,00.
The customer would almost always say we can get that for $8.00 somewhere else. Goog for you go get it.
This crap about charging $1.25 / tousand stitches will cost you  your a$$.
If you need a 4 head at a resonable price call me i am looking for a reason for getting out of enbroidery.
mooseman

[Prosperi-Tees]

I figured that was the case Moose. I just wonder if I could pick up some screen print customers by offering embroidery in house.

[JBLUE]

There is not a lot of money to be made at all when you run a single head unless you charge good money for the work. For example if you have a 13,000 stitch logo and you are paying someone 12 dollars an hour to run it on a single head there is not hardly any profit. Add a single head machine payment to the mix and you will make about a dollars worth of profit on this job when all is said and done. Now take this same job and run it on 6 heads and you can make about 600 bucks per day with that same 12 dollar an hour employee. If you did this same thing with 2 single heads you would be sitting at 90 dollars. These numbers work out for an 8 hour sew day.

[Gilligan]

There is not a lot of money to be made at all when you run a single head unless you charge good money for the work. For example if you have a 13,000 stitch logo and you are paying someone 12 dollars an hour to run it on a single head there is not hardly any profit. Add a single head machine payment to the mix and you will make about a dollars worth of profit on this job when all is said and done. Now take this same job and run it on 6 heads and you can make about 600 bucks per day with that same 12 dollar an hour employee. If you did this same thing with 2 single heads you would be sitting at 90 dollars. These numbers work out for an 8 hour sew day.

Help me out with the math on that.

$12 * 6 heads * 3 runs an hour * 8 hours a day - labor - cost = $600?

[mimosatexas]

4 extra heads = 510 extra dollars according to his example, so assuming an 8 hour day, that means an extra 63.75 per hour for those 4 heads, or $15.94 per head per hour.  So for 3 per hour, the design would have to be $5.31 per unit.

Seems like reasonable math actually.  According to my pricing sheet from my guy, and assuming the run sizes are around 24 units, that would be around the 13k stitch count.

No argument one way or the other on the whole "which machine is better for you" thing.  I couldn't afford a 6 head nor do I have the work to fill that 8 hours a day anyway...

[JBLUE]

There is not a lot of money to be made at all when you run a single head unless you charge good money for the work. For example if you have a 13,000 stitch logo and you are paying someone 12 dollars an hour to run it on a single head there is not hardly any profit. Add a single head machine payment to the mix and you will make about a dollars worth of profit on this job when all is said and done. Now take this same job and run it on 6 heads and you can make about 600 bucks per day with that same 12 dollar an hour employee. If you did this same thing with 2 single heads you would be sitting at 90 dollars. These numbers work out for an 8 hour sew day.

Help me out with the math on that.

Its money earned. This is a rough number off the top of my head.

$12 * 6 heads * 3 runs an hour * 8 hours a day - labor - cost = $600?

[Homer]

I made a ton of coin on a single head. so much so I added 2 more. I used the single head as a sample machine. I would do a run of 36 t's, sew a sample hat, toss it in the box. Customer would order some and I would send the production run out. It worked for a while, until I tossed some numbers around and just bought 2 more single heads. Digitizing is difficult to understand but that's what late nights are for. Send it out for a while, learn how they do it and apply that knowledge. If you are sitting around looking for work, anything that walks through the door is potential money. Some jobs you make money, some jobs you learn a lesson. It's called tuition 

[Prosperi-Tees]

I made a ton of coin on a single head. so much so I added 2 more. I used the single head as a sample machine. I would do a run of 36 t's, sew a sample hat, toss it in the box. Customer would order some and I would send the production run out. It worked for a while, until I tossed some numbers around and just bought 2 more single heads. Digitizing is difficult to understand but that's what late nights are for. Send it out for a while, learn how they do it and apply that knowledge. If you are sitting around looking for work, anything that walks through the door is potential money. Some jobs you make money, some jobs you learn a lesson. It's called tuition 

See that's where I am thinking it could be good for us as well but in reverse. The person coming in looking for hats that most likely will need shirts if not then and there but in the future. Or the business owners who want tshirts for their crew but half a dozen polos for himself. I always wonder when we tell them we can't embroider do they just find a shop that will do it all for them.

[Gilligan]

We have two single heads.

We do just about everything in house (except 90% of the digitizing, which we still make a few bucks on).

We grossed about 15k each year in the last couple of years.

It's not a ton of money... but with a single head it's pretty easy to just set something sewing, prep the next piece then walk away and do something else... then come back and swap it all around when you get a chance.

My guy works on art or answering emails and such.

We also don't run both machines simultaneously on a job (which I don't really agree with, but I don't interfere too much).  We will run them both if we have different jobs to get done at the same time and we DO run them both sometimes when we got to get a job done or it's larger... I just think we should almost always be running both on anything past 10 or so.

[abchung]

Look at the time or cost of digitizing.

If the design is simple, may be you might want to buy a digitizing software.
http://www.wingsxp.com/

https://www.wilcom.com/

I find digitizing is the most time consuming if the design is complicated.

[Prosperi-Tees]

I've noticed they are pretty stinking proud of software.

[GraphicDisorder]

Embroidery itself is the easy part.  Good quality digitizing is harder to master/learn.  90% of it is digitizing.  You can make a crap machine seems good with great digitizing.  Send it out for awhile but you will want to control that eventually because I am yet to see many digitizing files from overseas and even domestic that didn't need a tweak to be ideal.  Remember many digitizers don't actually do embroidery.  Some have many haven't.  So they are not totally on their game and many do not test the files. 

I would never buy a single head knowing what I know now.  No way no how.  Cost to goto a 2 head isn't double and often a used 4 head can be found for price of a new single head.  If you pay yourself or someone to run a single head any reasonable amount of money you'll be lucky to make anything and in some case lose money if you are financing the machine and such.  I gave away our single head.

Embroidery is a art in many ways.  It's not hard to learn but can be hard to be real good at it.  crap embroidery is common so it's easy to get in the game though and be decent. 

[tonypep]

What Brandt said. We have 42 heads, three different manufactures. Often we have to digitize same design differently for each machine