Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
I recently bought a single head ZSK. While I understand the premise of not making money on a single head machine, I have to disagree to a point. I am a very small 2 person shop. We contracted out embroidery for a few years. In my area it was very difficult to find quality embroiders. And a lot of times was not making a dime off of the jobs. Even more what drove me to getting one was because I was tired of handing off product that I was not 100% happy with. So far the machine has way more than paid for it self but it is a pain for doing large runs. I was wanting to go multi head but size of shop was a major factor.
Quote from: tonyt79 on March 17, 2015, 10:14:33 AMI recently bought a single head ZSK. While I understand the premise of not making money on a single head machine, I have to disagree to a point. I am a very small 2 person shop. We contracted out embroidery for a few years. In my area it was very difficult to find quality embroiders. And a lot of times was not making a dime off of the jobs. Even more what drove me to getting one was because I was tired of handing off product that I was not 100% happy with. So far the machine has way more than paid for it self but it is a pain for doing large runs. I was wanting to go multi head but size of shop was a major factor.Single heads have their place. But if you are paying yourself at all decent and you have high stitch count files to sew on a regular basis a single head you will not make any real money. So it depends on your market and what you want to do with it. If you intend on long runs I see no reason for a single head. Let's say you have a 15 minute sew time per garment on an order. Lets pretend you never stop and the machine never stops, its always running. So you get 4 garments per hour, you are only going to make 32pcs that day if you work full 8hrs. Lets say profit after thread, bobbins, backing, etc is $5 per garment. So your going to make $20 profit an hour on it. What are you paying yourself a hour to run this thing? I am going to guess more than $20 a hour, so now you are negative already. Keep in mind this is optimistic, as 15 minute run if your machine stops, needs thread/bobbin, thread break, you stop for a phone call etc this goes down from $20 a hour. Never mind digitizing time, machine set up, testing first garment maybe having to change the file, this time all counts on that job. Don't forget other costs like electric/machine payment if you have one/etc. Now if your paying someone say $10 a hour to run your machine, now your putting $10 in your pocket per hour, but don't forget all the costs with an employee over and above the hourly cost. Plus all those other things I mentioned like electric/payment/rent/taxes/so on.Now just double your machine, now its a 2 head... Some will argue different and that's fine. This is my experience in my shop and we do one off stuff to production stuff and ive not found a negative to having multi heads over singles other than space they take up. I started with a single head, then a 2 head, added 2- 4 heads, and then 2 - 6 Heads. I gave away my single head. I never made any real money on embroidery until we got our first 4 head.
Quote from: GraphicDisorder on March 17, 2015, 11:14:49 AMQuote from: tonyt79 on March 17, 2015, 10:14:33 AMI recently bought a single head ZSK. While I understand the premise of not making money on a single head machine, I have to disagree to a point. I am a very small 2 person shop. We contracted out embroidery for a few years. In my area it was very difficult to find quality embroiders. And a lot of times was not making a dime off of the jobs. Even more what drove me to getting one was because I was tired of handing off product that I was not 100% happy with. So far the machine has way more than paid for it self but it is a pain for doing large runs. I was wanting to go multi head but size of shop was a major factor.Single heads have their place. But if you are paying yourself at all decent and you have high stitch count files to sew on a regular basis a single head you will not make any real money. So it depends on your market and what you want to do with it. If you intend on long runs I see no reason for a single head. Let's say you have a 15 minute sew time per garment on an order. Lets pretend you never stop and the machine never stops, its always running. So you get 4 garments per hour, you are only going to make 32pcs that day if you work full 8hrs. Lets say profit after thread, bobbins, backing, etc is $5 per garment. So your going to make $20 profit an hour on it. What are you paying yourself a hour to run this thing? I am going to guess more than $20 a hour, so now you are negative already. Keep in mind this is optimistic, as 15 minute run if your machine stops, needs thread/bobbin, thread break, you stop for a phone call etc this goes down from $20 a hour. Never mind digitizing time, machine set up, testing first garment maybe having to change the file, this time all counts on that job. Don't forget other costs like electric/machine payment if you have one/etc. Now if your paying someone say $10 a hour to run your machine, now your putting $10 in your pocket per hour, but don't forget all the costs with an employee over and above the hourly cost. Plus all those other things I mentioned like electric/payment/rent/taxes/so on.Now just double your machine, now its a 2 head... Some will argue different and that's fine. This is my experience in my shop and we do one off stuff to production stuff and ive not found a negative to having multi heads over singles other than space they take up. I started with a single head, then a 2 head, added 2- 4 heads, and then 2 - 6 Heads. I gave away my single head. I never made any real money on embroidery until we got our first 4 head. I completely get what your saying. Making REAL money is not what we do at my shop. haha I'm kidding, but I do believe in my situation it is better to have it than to sub it out. But I did sub it out for years before deciding to bring it in.