How can I set up my Embroidery Business Structure? What consists of a good Embroidery Business Structure?
Before you can actually start offering your embroidery as a business there are a few items that need to be in place in order to have a successful embroidery business.
• A good solid foundation of How To Embroider – Know how to embroider all of the products that you will be offering your marketplace!
• A Business Plan in place, even if it is a simple 1- or 2-page plan will work just to keep you on track!
• Your pricing structure in place– one that you have created based on your expenses and profit need for your business that will make you money!
• Your sales tools created to make it easy and quick to work with customers!
• Your accounting system set up to save time as you are invoicing your customers!
• A scheduling system in place to stay on track of your production so that you can get your orders out on time.
• You are running smoothly with all of your systems in place
Having the right embroidery business structure with the necessary tools in place will help you create the systems to give your a good workflow. Knowing which business tools to purchase and how to set them up is extremely important in the success of your business.
If you are a business owner of any type of decorating apparel business that has been in business for a while and you are unsure of what business tools you need or how to set up your embroidery business structure, I have a training that you need to watch. Fill in the form below and get registered for that training. You will learn about all of the embroidery business tools that you need to start with.
Do you ever see with holes in garments after embroidery? Do you know how to prevent holes in garments from embroidery? Once the holes are there, it is very hard to repair them, sometimes impossible. Yes, many times this can be done, but the time that it takes is very costly. The best course of action is to prevent them from occurring in the first place.
If you see holes in garments after embroidery, check to see if any of these have been the culprit.
The wrong type of needle
The wrong sized needle
A burr on the needle
Too many stitches in your design
Too many stitches in one area in your design
The wrong type of backing
In our featured image, there are holes inside some of the small letters. These holes were created because the wrong needle was used. This image of embroidery was taken from a lightweight cotton t-shirt using polyester thread. The needle that was used was a 75/11 sharp needle. On a knit garment, you should be using a 70/10 ball point needle. As far as backing or stabilizer is concerned, on a knit garment, use 2 layers of no-show and1 layer of crisp tearaway backing along with topping on the top. The no-show cutaway backing holds it firm and gives it great stability and the tearaway keeps the small lettering crisp and flat so that it does not pucker up. This is especially important when you are working on a performance fabric.
Many times you will see holes in the centers of small letters when there are too many stitches in one area such as going around a curve. If you decrease your density this will usually help. If it does not cover enough, increase your underlay stitching, not your top thread stitching.
Holes in garments after embroidery can be totally avoided. I have a checklist that you can get to use as you are sewing out each of your designs before applying them to the finished garments. This checklist is going to help you with many of your production issues!
Do you have a signed Embroidery Design Customer Approval Form as one of the required steps in your embroidery job process?
Do you ever finish an embroidery job for a customer only to find out that the colors were not exactly what the customer wanted and then we will not accept it? This is an issue that can be totally avoided. I have also been given repeat orders that were just like the last one, but this time the shirt is a different color and the same colors will not work on this new shirt; now what do you do? Many times your customer will tell you that you can select the right color but that does not mean that they are going to like the colors that you selected. Do not get caught in this trap!
An Embroidery Design Customer Approval Form should be one of the necessary forms that you have in your embroidery business and make sure that you always get your customers approval before sewing out their embroidery design! This is a very important step, whether it is a new order or a repeat order. This is a step that so many embroiderers overlook and do not want to be bothered with, but many get caught with a job that is finished and the customer is not happy with it. This is a huge mistake that can be totally avoided!
An embroidered sample of the finished design, it can be a virtual sample, in the correct colors is a must. If you cannot physically give your customer a sample, email a copy in the correct colors and require that he or she reply back to you with an OK. Print out this OK and file it with your job order.
If you have several color combinations on different colored garments, show him the predominate sample in the correct colors and attach a list all of the color sequences for the remaining combinations on another copy of the approval form. Make sure that your form does include all of these color combinations. This is very important. This can help save you many headaches, time and money. This process will show your customer how organized you are and will help to create confidence in both you and your customer.
Download your copy of the Embroidery Design Customer Approval Formand make copies of it for your future use. If this form does not work for your particular business, create one that will.
Are you charging enough for embroidery to pay all of the bills, make a profit and have some extra set aside for growth? This is an struggle that most embroiderers deal with every day and cannot seem to get on top of it. They do not know how to charge or where to begin.
You may have heard my story of how I almost lost my business because of underpricing. I did what most embroiderers do; I gathered everyone else’ s price lists and averaged them out to create my own price list! Sometimes I would give the customer the lowest price around just to get the business and this was a huge mistake! So many embroiderers start out doing exactly the same thing that I did and that is a practice that must stop! There are many embroiderers that are in the same position that I was in and it is very sad. It does not have to be this way.
It Is Time To Stop Undercharging For Your Embroidery!
I would love to start a movement for embroiderers to stop working for nothing and start pricing their work for a price that is worthy of them. We are highly skilled professionals, not unskilled laborers, but so many embroiderers charge like they are unskilled laborers! This is not fair to the embroiderers that are trying to make a living and it is really causing many of them to second guess what they are doing! This is very disheartening!
There are many embroiderers that are working from home and they are just getting started. They think that their time is worth nothing and to get the work they must practically give it away. When you are first learning your craft, I can understand this way of thinking but it really must stop. Most embroiderers do not offer their products until they feel confident that they are ready and that their quality is good. You did not get into this business to kill time, you go into this business because you wanted to earn an income doing something that you love to do!
It is time to stand up and start charging what you should charge like the professional that you are so that you can actually make a living from your business or at least give you a good supplemental income.
There Is More To Pricing Embroidery Than Stitch Count!
When you are trying to come up with a good price list you must consider several factors and it is not all by stitch count. There is so much more that goes into figuring your pricing other than stitch count and that is what the majority of embroiderers are charging for. When your embroidery machine is not running, you are not making any money, how can stitch count be your only factor? It isn’t. You have color changes, stops and starts, the time it takes to put the garment into the machine and take it out along with other factors.
Who is paying to hoop it, who is paying to trim it, who pays for the packaging of the finished product? Most of the time it is the embroiderer and not the customer that pays all of those charges. This is not the way that it is supposed to be! You are performing a service and each piece of that service needs to be figured into your pricing structure.
You need to know exactly how much each one of these pieces are costing you and the only way that you can accurately know that is to start timing each one of your steps. Each function that you perform in your business has a time and cost attached to it; start timing each one of these functions and figure out how much it is costing you. I have always been an advocate for timing everything that I do. Time is money and you cannot get it back when you give it away. Your time is precious. Use it wisely and start charging for your time.
I have had many requests on how to set up a retail area for embroidery when you do not have much space and I wanted to share an experience with you when I set up my retail area for embroidery when I only had a small hallway to work with.
As many of you know I set up a retail space within the embroidery shop that I had open. I have since closed that shop, but I wanted to share the experience with you of how setting up a retail area for embroidery in a very small space is totally doable. We did not have an attractive storefront to work with like many other businesses; our building was set up for office space and production. What I had to work with was little more than a hallway and one office room, but I was determined to make the most of that space and make it work.
This was a very small space, but we have a lot packed into it. You can set up a very efficient and attractive retail area for embroidery even if you only have a small space to work with. We planned out every inch of it and set up our product displays in separate areas in order to make it easy for anyone to find what they are looking for.
It took a lot of time to plan everything out and create our samples but the end result was well worth it.
To start the planning process I laid my entire plan out on a mind map. If you are not familiar with a mind map you can use a Word doc and draw it out. I do all of my planning using mind maps and it makes it so easy and organized.
I started out by doing some keyword research to choose the name and then I purchased it.
I decided on what products to carry based on what people had been asking for and the information that I received asking other people what they would like to see me carry.
I planned out each area and function and what each one would need from each display area to the processes inside of the office.
I decided on which embroidery layouts, fonts, and designs that I was going to be offering on a stock basis.
I purchased samples and embroidered them
I created Product Sheets on each of these items with all of the information about the item including the price
I created a lot of embroidery samples to hang on the wall in pictures frames such as my lettering fonts and my monogram fonts.
I embroidered jacket back-sized designs of jobs that we had done in the past and hung them around the ceiling for people to see the minute that they came through the door.
I created price lists for the different types of items and hung them on the wall or displayed them by the area where the items where. Most of these are done in picture frames to make them attractive.
I purchased display pieces that I would need. I used a lot of items that I had around my home that I thought would work. I was trying to keep the cost down as much as possible.
I planned out the promotion for the Grand Opening and the follow-up.
I purchased a 4‚’ x 12‚’ banner for the front of the building.
I ordered a Sandwich Board and made a banner on each side and set it out on the sidewalk in front of the building.
I also planned out the Follow-up Marketing System
Planning is the key to getting it all done and on time. I set a specific date and planned out each week as to what had to be done that week in order to have the Grand Opening on a certain date.
I went to the town board and spoke with the Economic Development director to see if there was a way that we could get some type of publicity and that was a really good move. He said that I could have a ribbon-cutting ceremony and that he would arrange that part. He gave me the names and addresses of all of the town, county and state dignitaries so I sent each one of them an invitation to attend our ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The Monday before the Grand Opening date, I sent out a press release to all of the local media. I ended up having 3 radio stations and 2 TV stations represented for the ceremony. It was great! I really never expected that part, but it really turned out excellent for us. One of the TV stations did a segment on us that appeared on the evening news and one of the radio stations also did an interview and it was on the radio during the afternoon.
That has brought in a fair amount of people and I did not have to pay for any of that advertising so I was very happy with the results. I did some trade advertising on one of the local radio stations and that worked out fairly well. We had several people come in and say that they heard about us on the radio.
The amazing thing was that our neighbors had all discovered that we existed and were starting to visit us. The contract part of this business had been in this building for 7 years and no one in the neighborhood even knew there was an embroidery shop there at all! There was only a tiny sign on the door and no one you could even read from the street.
I had a banner made to put on the front of the building. At least people were seeing the banner and were curious! The sandwich board with the banner on was also working.
For the Grand Opening, we embroidered coasters to give away along with a $10.00 gift certificate that they could use towards their next purchase. We also had refreshments and a drawing for a gift basket. Our grand opening lasted 3 days, we had a lot of fun doing it and as I said earlier, it was so worth it!
I wanted to share this experience with you to help you in planning out setting up your retail area for embroidery in a small area for your products. You did not have to spend a lot of money to do this, it took more planning than money!
This would work for you even if you want to set up a spot in your home to display your products, or rent a small space in a hotel or a club that you belong to. You can plan out a customer appreciation night or a couple of nights to bring people in and show them what you have to offer. What you get out of it will more than pay for the cost of putting it together. This will make people aware of what you are doing and what you have to offer.
Promotion and marketing is very important and without it, your business will not grow in the way that you want it to. To learn more about marketing and promoting your business, go to The Embroidery Business Academy. Check out what is offered in the Platinum Level.
