Thinking about embroidery

[Maxie]

I have been doing silk screen printing since 1994, now have 2 automatics print about 1000 shirts a day.    We get quite a lot of orders for embroidery that we end send to sub contractors.
I want to try and find out if it will worth our while doing embroidery in house, I see that quite a lot of you do both.
What is the investment?
What size machine should we start with?
Which machine?
Is it profitable?
Is digitizing and running the machine difficult to learn?
I'd be starting from scratch, I know nothing about embroidery.
For me silk screen is like a hobby, will it be the same with embroidery or is it tedious and boring?

[dirkdiggler]

we were in the same boat as you, I bought a 1 head, which most here will disagree with.   And I am about to buy a four or 6 head depending on space.  No where near as cool as screenprinting, but I really needed it done in house.  Good luck.

[GaryG]

Hey Maxie,

With an operation of your size, I'd day yes and yes it is worth your time.
Even if your current send out volume isn't large because you many not of been outwardly selling it,
you have many contacts than will certainly need that "other half" of your industry.

And at your volume you probably have a chunk set aside for just such an investment.
This could be anywhere from $20K to $60K depending upon number of embroidery heads.
Size is connected to your projected volume, but wouldn't start with less than 6 heads in your case.
You can always add another 6 or 12 head, but will kick yourself if you start too small with 2 or 4 heads.

Tajima or Barudan or go home.

It can be very profitable with quality output. But of course don't expect to kick out like screen printing.
Profit comes in higher mark-up per piece of course. Therefore 6 heads and up.

Best to start sending out logos to get a handle on how they are created and stitched out. Digitizing can be very daunting
and hard to grasp unless someone spends a lot of time to learn aside from digitizing type and simple outputs.

"Slik screening" is like a hobby and fun for most of us - embroidery can be similar, but takes commitment to succeed.

It can be frustrating at first, but if you or your staff are half technically minded, very rewarding in the end.
Threading needles is dainty. Pretty proficient here now, but starting out, I was saying - just give me a squeeze and let me jam some ink through a screen!

Wish you well over there- hopefully the economy may be doing better world round these days. 

[Rockers]

At the homeland of Tajima we pay around US$25,000 for the latest single head model. That`s incl. the software. A 6 head will be around $40,000 incl. the soft.
We are considering as well to first get a single head, see how that goes and then upgrade to a 6 head. Never head a request for anything over 100 pcs but then we do not officially offer embroidery services on our website. I assume as soon as we do that the whole situation might change.
We would get 2 days of training with someone from Tajima.
I don`t think it is a much fun as screen printing though.

[Maxie]

I checked our figures, we are paying about $3000 a month for embroidery to sub contractors.
Seems like a no brainer, just got to check out carefully what's involved.
I'm going to ISS Long Beach so I'll see what I can find out there, maybe go to a lectures.

[Rockers]

I checked our figures, we are paying about $3000 a month for embroidery to sub contractors.
Seems like a no brainer, just got to check out carefully what's involved.
I'm going to ISS Long Beach so I'll see what I can find out there, maybe go to a lectures.

You got a time of the year when the shop is not as busy? That would be a good time to get the embroidery dep. set up. Lead times for us are 3 month for an embroidery machine from Tajima.

[GraphicDisorder]

What is the investment? - I would bank on 50k to start.
What size machine should we start with? 4-6 Heads at least.
Which machine? Barudan or Tajima, dismiss all other options.
Is it profitable? Yes.
Is digitizing and running the machine difficult to learn? It is not a overnight thing, sub your digitizing in the beginning but buy your digitizing software and learn as you go. You will need to learn to edit files quickly as often a digitized file still would need a tweak once its test sewn.

If you are paying 3k a month already in embroidery, IMO, you could buy a 6 head, pay the note on it and pay your labor. Now you are probably just going to be about even on that for a bit but as you grow you will have it in house and better control over it.

[mk162]

i agree with everything posted above.  You should be doing it in house at that rate.  I also find the "if you build it they will come" model to work in this case since you have the customer base in printing already, adding another service that interlocks with what you offer will only open them up more.

[ftembroidery]

I agree with the above comments. If you take the plunge, also take all the classes you can (from the manuf. of the machine, ISS, etc.) on digitizing, hooping, pricing and so forth.

Another thing this will open up for you is the ability to COMBINE services on garments.  One of the things we do is embroider the left chest and do a large screen print back on shirts for construction/renovation/housing repair companies.  When you are within arms-length of someone (like conversations, shaking hands), embroidery looks really good and very professional.  When that same person has their back to you and is working at the other end of the property, you can see the screen printing and know they are part of the crew.

[Inkworks]

I just did exactly this, bought a shiny new 4 head Barudan, so far so good, but don't expect to be running as fast as your sub-contractor for a few months at least, there is a lot to learn and it's pretty fiddly to start with.

Don't cheap out on a machine! you don't want some cranky P.O.S. fighting you as you learn, and make sure you have good local technician support!

[Prints Charming]

IMO Tajima  and Wilcom software.  we have a 6 head and a couple of Toyata single heads.  talk to jeff at hirsh  booth at the  long each show.

[mk162]

You can't go wrong with either Barudan or Tajima.  If I had to do it over again I would buy another Barudan, and immediately switch to poly threads.  The SWF hated poly.  We had nothing but loops no matter what we did.

Our production is WAY up.  We actually are up over 50% in embroidery billings and up over 100% in amount of goods embroidered.  (we took on a contract customer). We did all that on only 1 more head.

[GraphicDisorder]

My best advice is buy biggest machine you can possibly buy. If I had to do it all again I wouldn't buy less than a 4 head ever again, no way no how. Either I can get a 4 head or bigger or I don't do embroidery.

[mk162]

2 heads don't make financial sense honestly.  You can buy 2 singles for less money.

4 heads are a great start.  6's are a better bet, we usually run 7 heads, or 6 and use the single for name drops.  For the $200 a month the single costs us it makes it back EASILY.  If it was our only machine or if we only had 2 of them I would scream.

[GraphicDisorder]

2 heads don't make financial sense honestly.  You can buy 2 singles for less money.

4 heads are a great start.  6's are a better bet, we usually run 7 heads, or 6 and use the single for name drops.  For the $200 a month the single costs us it makes it back EASILY.  If it was our only machine or if we only had 2 of them I would scream.

Id agree and only add that if you only had a single head you'd struggle to make money in a lot of markets. Hat production for example in my market, not a chance at making money on a single head. 10-15k stitches on many hats we run here. Some as many as 25k stitches. Imagine that on a single head, 30 minute run time on a hat if it doesn't stop at all? 2pcs a hour, 16pcs in a 8 hour day. Makes your eyes cross. We did it for awhile but then math took over and we added a 2 head. Which helped but was still a mistake for our market.

Now name drops all day, ya you could make money on it, but id still argue in some cases a single head would be hard to turn much profit time you pay someone to run it, that is if you are counting the time to make the sale, digitize the name, set up the name, run it, manage the garment and so on. Getting what  around $5 bucks each, it wont go far. But if you had a single head sitting next to a 4 or 6 head now you can make real sense of that single head. I would probably still have a 6 head sitting in the single heads place though, for capacity sake and with a 6 head clocking in at about 1k a month on a lease, zero issues making that pay. We probably pay for that machine in 1 business day.