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Embroidery => General Embroidery => Topic started by: Prosperi-Tees on January 07, 2016, 06:45:17 PM
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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?
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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
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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
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I figured that was the case Moose. I just wonder if I could pick up some screen print customers by offering embroidery in house.
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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.
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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?
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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...
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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?
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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 ;D
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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 ;D
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.
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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.
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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/ (http://www.wingsxp.com/)
https://www.wilcom.com/ (https://www.wilcom.com/)
I find digitizing is the most time consuming if the design is complicated.
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I've noticed they are pretty stinking proud of software.
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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.
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What Brandt said. We have 42 heads, three different manufactures. Often we have to digitize same design differently for each machine
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Just got a new barudan single head about a month ago. I was told by most, don't buy a single head. I just wanted to get started, get comfortable and get good first, so I bought it. After just a few weeks of running the machine, and might I add the barudan is AMAZING! Not sure I even know what a thread break is, it doesn't happen. Worked in a shop with 40 plus heads of another brand and all day long dealt with thread breaks. Anyway, yes, you can find used multi head machines for close to the same price, but I don't want someone elses problems and I never buy used. That's just me. Here is my honest opinion after running this thing now for a few weeks. I can see why, sometimes my outsourced embroidery sux, I already know what they are doing wrong, and I can already do hats better than they can. It pays to do it yourself. Second and probably most important, DOUBT YOU WILL MAKE MUCH MONEY ON A SINGLE HEAD. Its just to damn slow. Hurry up and wait! Its a good way to learn, but expensive too. I wouldn't get rid of mine, but you better believe at least a 6 head is in my near future.
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A single head is a great addition to existing machines. especially since I guess Barudan has software to run them like a multi head machine pretty easily. We will be adding one soon just because we have too much small work for the multi head.
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Just got a new barudan single head about a month ago. I was told by most, don't buy a single head. I just wanted to get started, get comfortable and get good first, so I bought it. After just a few weeks of running the machine, and might I add the barudan is AMAZING! Not sure I even know what a thread break is, it doesn't happen. Worked in a shop with 40 plus heads of another brand and all day long dealt with thread breaks. Anyway, yes, you can find used multi head machines for close to the same price, but I don't want someone elses problems and I never buy used. That's just me. Here is my honest opinion after running this thing now for a few weeks. I can see why, sometimes my outsourced embroidery sux, I already know what they are doing wrong, and I can already do hats better than they can. It pays to do it yourself. Second and probably most important, DOUBT YOU WILL MAKE MUCH MONEY ON A SINGLE HEAD. Its just to damn slow. Hurry up and wait! Its a good way to learn, but expensive too. I wouldn't get rid of mine, but you better believe at least a 6 head is in my near future.
This is what we did. Except we started with an SWF. It was great for the learning curve. If you can run one of those a Barudan is like driving a Ferrari compared to a Prius. We added a second single head which happened to be a Barudan. I could not sell that SWF fast enough after less than a day running the new machine.
The other route you can go if you want which works as well is to load up on single heads. 6 singles will out run a 6 head in a speed race. When you do have a thread break or a bobbin change all 6 heads stop. With the singles all the other heads keep running when one stops. I know a few people that all they run are singles for this reason. Space is also an issue that can factor in it too.
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We make money with our single head,(maybe not what some you can make on multi heads) while it's sewing we screen print or do other things, you just take the order's your comfy with just like you would doing screen printing don't bite off more than you can chew, plus you can do that even with a ton of equipment if your not careful.
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I think my focus is not to have embroidery as a profit center per se but to have it be a gateway to the screen printing side, if the embroidery pays for itself then great.
When I first started screen printing I bought a Brother PR620 but never learned it because I was still learning how to print plus I had a full time job so I didn't give any effort into figuring out how it works so I sold it. Now I have more time and can put the effort into learning.
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We have two single heads.
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.
If the machines are not the same brand you will notice a difference in the embroidery from one machine to the other. I run singles, and there is a difference between brands on how a design sews out.
This may be why they don't want to run the same job on the two machines.
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We have two single heads.
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.
If the machines are not the same brand you will notice a difference in the embroidery from one machine to the other. I run singles, and there is a difference between brands on how a design sews out.
This may be why they don't want to run the same job on the two machines.
We've even seen differences in 2 machines that are the same brand. (SWF). Good machines but not great machines.
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We have two single heads.
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.
If the machines are not the same brand you will notice a difference in the embroidery from one machine to the other. I run singles, and there is a difference between brands on how a design sews out.
This may be why they don't want to run the same job on the two machines.
Yeah, but you are assuming he's putting thought into that process. ;)
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Emb. has been on my mind too, We had a lady with her 4 head Tajima here in-shop for a while, but she's moved to her garage. She still does our work, but it makes for some logistical issues and I've rather have it in-house so I've started exploring getting a machine.
As far as profitability, it's not so much making big money on the embroidery itself, but the fact that most embroidered garments and hats have greater margins and overall higher values than t-shirts. A run of 50 jackets with $50 profit on each one adds up in a hurry!
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In our office we only have room for a single head, a 2 head would be pushing it. Are machines tolerant of temp swings? In the winter it could be 40 degrees in the shop and summer could be 120.
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In our office we only have room for a single head, a 2 head would be pushing it. Are machines tolerant of temp swings? In the winter it could be 40 degrees in the shop and summer could be 120.
Temp no. Humidity and static charge yes.
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In our office we only have room for a single head, a 2 head would be pushing it. Are machines tolerant of temp swings? In the winter it could be 40 degrees in the shop and summer could be 120.
same here, that's another reason I bought a single, we will be adding on to the shop a climate controlled embroidery room, so I can get a big machine.
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We are new to in-house embroidery. We ended up buying a chinese 4 head (Avance from Coldesi) 6 months ago. While we have had some issues they have all been over come (so far). Would we have prefer a better brand? Sure, but we wanted the most heads we could get that was in our budget. It is what it is.
Quality digitizing will be your largest hurdle... it's something we are still searching for.
What I can tell you with certainty is that you'll be longing for more heads. We recently did a 122 pc order... 27k left chest and 122 different name drops on the right chest. That's a 40-ish minute sew out per piece and would take you over 81 hours minimum on a single head just for the left chest. We are in the middle of a 2200 left chest order now. We would never have gotten either of these jobs with a single head. It's a bit of a challenge to make decent money with 4.
I don't like your idea of using as a gateway to screen printing work and not a profit center one bit. Every piece of equipment shout be part of the profit center. Period. If it's not you shouldn't be buying it.
Your situation is what it is. Do it as long as you understand that there will be little to no profit, and a possibly a drain on you patience and resources with a single.
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You nailed it. When you get down to math you are just not going to make much of any if any at all money on a single head. Now a gang of them, maybe. That will depend on your mix of work. If your constantly doing just names or one off items, a gang of single heads may make sense. We've approached it a bit different in that we believed we should have 4 and 6 head machines and multiples of each. We often have large runs and we find it nice to have a bunch of multi-heads to run them on. We can blow through larger orders very quickly. Or we can even just run a single item on a 4 head while the rest of our machines are running big orders. People get all freaked out about using a multi-head at times with just 1 or 2 items running on it now and then. Never understood that. We use the the several multi-heads we have to be flexible be it with 1 item or 1000's. It's worked amazing for us.
Remember, you can't be flexible with a single head, it runs 1 item. No other options.
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If you are a small one or two person shop, I would farm it out. I bought a 4 head Tajima and I could not figure out how to use the machine. But I did make money at embroidery. I bought the machine for $7K and sold it for $9K.
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We just brought machines in house approx 2 weeks ago. Our vendor was downsizing so we picked up 6 single head machines off of them. Before 2 weeks ago we knew little to nothing about embroidery. After researching online and playing around a few days its coming together quite nice. After seeing the quality we are doing within two weeks and the quality we were receiving from our vendor, I agree with the easy to learn and hard to master idea. Having super cheap/fast digitizing services available makes it easy to get into I feel.
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Hi,
Its been 3-4 years I'm doing embroidery. Embroidery is something that comes when you practice a lot.
Research online, read blogs and articles for new techniques, ticks and tips for hand and machine embroidery http://absolutedigitizing.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Absolutedigitizing/Hand_Embroidery_Stitches_One_Must_Be_Aware_Of (http://absolutedigitizing.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Absolutedigitizing/Hand_Embroidery_Stitches_One_Must_Be_Aware_Of)
Just keep on practicing and you will master in embroidery.
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Thanks for the link Jason.
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I've been quietly reading this topic for a while now. We've been outsourcing all our embroidery needs but haven't been able to find a decent supplier that meets our needs for turnaround and (contract) pricing. Just pulled the trigger on a 2 head machine. We'll see how it goes and how much money we are able to make off of it.
We were making decent money with outsourcing so I'm guessing we'll be able to grow and make good money bringing it in house. Even if we don't have enough production daily, there's more work that needs to be done around the shop so a new hire was already in our (near) future.
Digitizing is what troubles me. Our machine comes with Wilcom software but it's going to take a while to learn how to work with it.
Anyone knows of a good digitizing service we can begin with?
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Well congrats. Please do follow up posts to this thread or start your own with your progression.
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been learning Wilcom myself for the past couple of months. Its complex, but the basic stuff is not that hard. For simple stuff the auto digitize works great, you just have to correct the order it sews, for some reason the software never does it right. And its bundled with Corel, and they interact with each other, for us it sux because we are Adobe people. But I am getting used to it.
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been learning Wilcom myself for the past couple of months. Its complex, but the basic stuff is not that hard. For simple stuff the auto digitize works great, you just have to correct the order it sews, for some reason the software never does it right. And its bundled with Corel, and they interact with each other, for us it sux because we are Adobe people. But I am getting used to it.
We are Adobe people too, hope there's a way not to use Corel, no one in the company (we employ 3 designers) knows how to work with it
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I've been quietly reading this topic for a while now. We've been outsourcing all our embroidery needs but haven't been able to find a decent supplier that meets our needs for turnaround and (contract) pricing. Just pulled the trigger on a 2 head machine. We'll see how it goes and how much money we are able to make off of it.
We were making decent money with outsourcing so I'm guessing we'll be able to grow and make good money bringing it in house. Even if we don't have enough production daily, there's more work that needs to be done around the shop so a new hire was already in our (near) future.
Digitizing is what troubles me. Our machine comes with Wilcom software but it's going to take a while to learn how to work with it.
Anyone knows of a good digitizing service we can begin with?
What type/brand of machine did you go with? I've been following this as well and am trying to determine my best pathway into this as well.
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been learning Wilcom myself for the past couple of months. Its complex, but the basic stuff is not that hard. For simple stuff the auto digitize works great, you just have to correct the order it sews, for some reason the software never does it right. And its bundled with Corel, and they interact with each other, for us it sux because we are Adobe people. But I am getting used to it.
We are Adobe people too, hope there's a way not to use Corel, no one in the company (we employ 3 designers) knows how to work with it
the auto features ONLY work with corel. You can however do your work in ILLY and open it in Corel and then import into Wilcom. That's how we are doing it.
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so far auto digitizing is like a separations plug-in. It gets you almost there, but you will probably have to tweak it to make it work just right.
I would recommend taking a class on it. I am sure there are plenty of online videos from reputable sources on how to digitize as well. A lot of it is trial and error.
Or better yet, master name drops and easy stuff and send out the complex work to professionals.
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You wont have to know how to use corel to work with it. Wilcom will just bring in the file (it uses corel to do it). You will still do a lot of work not a lot "auto" about it if you care about the sew out. But it will help you in some cases.
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You wont have to know how to use corel to work with it. Wilcom will just bring in the file (it uses corel to do it). You will still do a lot of work not a lot "auto" about it if you care about the sew out. But it will help you in some cases.
1 color simple logos, it seems to work. But it gets the sewing order wrong. Still learning though.
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You wont have to know how to use corel to work with it. Wilcom will just bring in the file (it uses corel to do it). You will still do a lot of work not a lot "auto" about it if you care about the sew out. But it will help you in some cases.
1 color simple logos, it seems to work. But it gets the sewing order wrong. Still learning though.
Often the software will have stitches going wrong way in parts of the logo vs other parts, using wrong stitches, and often on lettering a mess. It still requires a good bit of work. Nothing automatic about it in any case ive seen. Yes some half ass users would just auto digitize it and sew. But that wont keep customers lol.
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You wont have to know how to use corel to work with it. Wilcom will just bring in the file (it uses corel to do it). You will still do a lot of work not a lot "auto" about it if you care about the sew out. But it will help you in some cases.
1 color simple logos, it seems to work. But it gets the sewing order wrong. Still learning though.
Often the software will have stitches going wrong way in parts of the logo vs other parts, using wrong stitches, and often on lettering a mess. It still requires a good bit of work. Nothing automatic about it in any case ive seen. Yes some half ass users would just auto digitize it and sew. But that wont keep customers lol.
You are definitely right, no substitute for learning the right way. That's what I am working on, right or not at all.
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There is no substitute for good digitizing. Stitch type and direction can give a design a lot of depth.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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There is no substitute for good digitizing. Stitch type and direction can give a design a lot of depth.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That's why some are basically free and others are high, we have learned you get what you pay for in digitizing. Its the most important part.
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There is no substitute for good digitizing. Stitch type and direction can give a design a lot of depth.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I would say you can make a crap machine sew quality work with good digitizing. So its more important in my books!
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Some of the best money I spent on embroidery was the digitizing course from Balboa. https://learntodigitize.net/training/
Very easy to follow along. There is also an E3 tour that shows all the functions and where they are.
I originally bought E3 to edit the outsourced digitizing but now do everything in house.
I can't agree more with the posts about digitizing will make you or break you. When I first started embroidery my mindset was that the outsourced digitizing must be correct because those people do it all day long so all my problems must be with me. That was my first mistake. My Barudan sews different than the Tajima. Especially on caps. Some of my designs have 2 files of the same logo. One named Barudan--- the other Tajima---.
I'm not saying outsourced digitizing is bad and they don't know what they are doing, so don't yell at me, I'm saying that even if you do outsource knowing how to digitize is important for good embroidery. It's much easier to be able to edit it yourself and move on.
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I've been following this for a bit and thought that I'd jump in and throw my two cents worth in here. We started with emb. and then added screenprinting, lol backwards from what most have done. As for logo setups. We used to set everything up ourselves, but in the last year and several dig. companies, I've landed on one that has fast turn and good quality, an revisions back within a two hr time frame. I've just found that outsourcing has far more profit than sitting down and doing it ourselves. I want the machines running nonstop. We started with a single head then added a four head then added another single. Large runs I run 5 heads for the job and leave one single open for logo run outs. Running the numbers it's working, I'm looking at adding a 6-8 head here before to long. Only thing I really setup in house are names or web sites. Margins are super tight running against larger companies. But our contract customers keep us busy. Walk ins eh theres not much room for making money, if there stuff pays overhead I consider it a win. But those have become fewer and with the move to a new building off the beaten path I hope its fewer yet. hard to make money after you sit up there for an hour talking to a customer and helping them figure out what they want. I'd say take a look at what your wanting to do. If its smaller orders there might not be enough margins in there to make it worth your time. Don't skimp on a machine. We've run several different kinds and now only run tajimas. Sit in a couple of crash courses for logo setups. The programs are getting easier and easier all the time. They have come a long way from our tape reader or 3x3 punch board with cross hairs to setup logos lol.
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I have been doing embroidery for 23 years and have become very good at it... in my opnion the hardest thing to learn was tensions, hooping was the easy part it always helps when you have a hooping board but i have done it both ways by hand and with hooping board yes the hoopmaster is by far the best way to hoop all garments i also have digitized and found out it is easier to outsource as it takes along time to do it your self you just need to find the right one. running the machines are the easy part as long as you have the tensions down i have run all types of machinery and over the years have learned how to repair them you can do alot of work on just a 1 head machine, but multi heads are definitely more efficient. and there is money to be made in embroidery ...