by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing, Embroidery Production
Would you believe that changing embroidery thread could increase your production by 20%? Recently I was asked by an Embroidery supply company to do a comparison for a company that they were working with to help increase their production. This was for a large company that embroidered monograms only. They were looking for a way to increase their production without compromising their quality.
This was a very interesting experiment. I took a basic 3 letter monogram, set it up with underlay, pullcomp and density as I normally would. I embroidered it with the normal Robison-Anton 40 weight embroidery thread No. 122. I then took the same monogram, reduced the density by 20% and sewed it out with a 35 weight embroidery thread, Robison-Anton No. 152. The images below are scanned images, They are not photographs. I wanted you to be able to see what I saw! Scanned images seem to show up more flaws than photographs.
40 Weight Thread 35 Weight Thread
I could not believe my eyes. I embroidered each one on a piece of denim at 800 stitches per minutes and there was very little visible difference in the monograms at all and with the density being 20% less, the sewing time was also 20% less. This would help to increase the production at the end of the day by 20% for the large monogram company. This is huge if you have a lot of embroidery machine heads running with different monograms!
I remember when the rage was all about having your school name embroidered on the back of corduroy jackets about 25 years ago, I embroidered the backs of all of those jackets using 30 weight embroidery thread. This cut down about 30% on stitch count and production times. Using 30 weight thread, you definitely could see a difference in the appearance, but you cannot really tell the difference in the 35 weight embroidery thread. This is very exciting to me.
I wanted to share this with you so that you could start thinking about different ways of cutting down on your production time. This would not work for very fine detail in designs but for something like jackets backs or monograms, this 35 weight embroidery thread would work great and you can cut your production down by 20%!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
Hosting a “Customer Appreciation Night” is a fun and effective way to let your customers, friends, and family know that you are truly ready for business or you want to increase your business. The holiday are creeping up on us very quickly and now is the time to plan for that big boost that you can bring into your business for the year end! This is the perfect time to showcase all of your new applications and processes along with your new products and of course your high quality products and service.
Be creative in putting together your invitations and planning what specials you will have to offer. Encourage your guests to bring a friend with them. Make sure the invitations are of the same high quality workmanship as your embroidery. For the holidays you want to make sure you create a full holiday theme! Have your business totally decked out with holiday decorations and make it very festive! You also want to let your guests know that they will receive a free gift just for attending. Create something embroidered for them to take home. This can be done very inexpensively.
For the Holiday Party theme, you could make some felt ornaments with your logo and contact information on them. I have done this. They are quick to turn around so you can have a large quantity ready before your “Customer Appreciation Night.”
Important Customer Appreciation Details
The best hours for these “Customer Appreciation Nights” are from 4 pm until 7pm. This will give people a chance to come during business hours or after work. Holding the event for two nights usually works better than one night because more people will be able to fit one of the nights into their schedule.
Have all of your samples tagged with pricing and ordering information. This will make it easier for you and the customer. This eliminates a lot of questions and gives your customers and prospects a level of security knowing that you are totally organized and know what you are doing!
If you have a home business, it can be held off premises. A small room in a hotel or a meeting room in a club or organization will work for this purpose.
If the “Customer Appreciation Night” is at your place of business, have your machines running. This is very impressive. You can be running the items that they are going to be taking home. Seeing the process actually done is very exciting to someone that does not know anything about embroidery.
Do not try to do this yourself if you are the only person in your business. See if you can pull in a helper and get them trained enough to run the one type of job, over and over for that night. This could be a son or daughter, husband or trusted friend. It is not hard to train someone to do this if they are only going to be doing the same job over and over.
You need to be free so that you can mingle and be talking to your customers and prospective customers. You want to be as helpful and answer as many questions as possible.
Gift Baskets-Great Gift Display Idea
Have a variety of different samples displayed in an attractive manner and encourage them to ask questions. Help them to visualize their ideas on a garment or other item. You can create some various themed baskets such as a House Warming, Bridal Shower, Baby Shower, Child‚’s Birthday and even a Get Well basket! People love gift baskets and they are very easy to sell. You could have one for each theme and then take orders.
The gift baskets could contain various items but most of all, embroidered products. An example of products could be for a bridal shower, a bath towel, hand towel and washcloth set along with a roll of embroidered toilet paper and embroidered soap. They could all have the bridal couple‚’s new monogram on them. Gift baskets are easy to create and can command a high dollar!
Keep It Simple
Have plenty of business cards and brochures for them to take. Make up a form for them to fill out with all of their contact information on it including their email address. Have a bowl or basket for them to drop this form into. You can have a drawing for a gift certificate at the end of the evening. Serve refreshments, but keep it simple. You want this to be a fun event for you and the guests.
A “Customer Appreciation Night” does not have to be expensive to be very effective. Remember, everyone needs personalized gift items, even your corporate clients. We all have Weddings to attend, birthdays, anniversaries and need gifts for many other occasions, personal and corporate. Keep it simple and most of all have fun and make sure that it is an event that your guests will remember.
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
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Starting a new embroidery business is not easy. It is very exciting, but it can be extremely overwhelming to the new embroidery business owner with all that you need to learn in a very short time.
When I first started my embroidery business, I did not have any type of a guide to help me get started and I made so many mistakes. There is so many key elements that I did not understand, but need to be set in place before you can become profitable. I wrote this embroidery business book to:
- Help you create a Working Business Plan
- Help you set your goals
- Help you create your Marketing Plan
- Show you how to price your Embroidery and Products
- Help you find a Niche or your very own corner of the embroidery world
- Help you Organize your Embroidery Business
- How you find good dedicated employees
- Help you create an Action Plan that that is so vial to your business!
My passion is to help you get off to a fast start! There is no reason why you should start your embroidery business without the sufficient knowledge that will help you to succeed right from the beginning.
If you are someone that has already started your own embroidery business and is not having the type of success that you had envisioned, then this book will help you get on the right path to developing your own profitable embroidery business.
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
As embroiderers, we are always looking for ways to increase our name recognition and ways for people to remember who we are! It is amazing what the power of gift giving can do for your embroidery business!
I have found that giving a simple gift to the person that placed the order for an organization or business works wonders for increasing your name recognition and bringing in new business! When they receive a gift from you, they will remember you, and they very quickly pass on your name to other people. This inspires people to help you spread the name of your embroidery business and there is no better way to do it than to show your appreciation by giving gifts to your buyers!
What types of gifts should you give?
Gifts may vary depending on your audience or niche market. It is best to give an item that you carry in your line that would be relevant for them and something that could easily be turned into another order. If you have added a new way of decorating an item it may be a smart option to include this on your gift to show what new processes you have introduced into your embroidery business.
How much should I be spending on these gifts?
That can be relative to what your buyer is actually purchasing from you or it can be a very inexpensive gift. You are purchasing your gifts at wholesale prices, adding an embellishment to it and increasing the value by 2 or 3 times the cost to you. I would suggest that you add give something that this person would not normally purchase. This will make your buyer feel very special to receive something that they have not seen or would not purchase personally and at the same time will allow you to increase your exposure of items to your audience.
When a buyer receives a gift from you like this that they are not expecting, they become very excited and very quickly want to tell the whole world. I have had this same experience myself. I went into my insurance agent‚’s office not long ago to go over my policies because I wanted to make sure that I was covered for any catastrophes that might happen in today‚’s world! To my surprise, when my agent finished going over everything and made the changes she handed me a gift card! I was shocked and so excited. Now this gift card was only $10.00, very inexpensive relative to what I had just purchased, but it did not matter. I was so excited I told everybody I knew about it! This is the reaction that you will receive when you start giving gifts to your customers for their large purchases.
These gifts are classified as marketing expenses!
They are one of the least expensive and most cost effective ways of advertising or marketing your products. You can even set a limit to your gift depending on the amount of the sale that you have received. It can be a dollar amount or a percentage of the sale. You can ask your accountant to help you figure this out relative to your business. For a service business the average amount of money spent on marketing or advertising is 7 to 8 percent of your sales. I am not suggesting that you spend that much for gift giving in your embroidery business. You can limit it to 1%, 2 % or 5% depending on your total sales or the actual profit that you make from these sales. This is something that can be determined only by you and your accountant. This brought in many more sales for my embroidery business and I could never say that it cost me money!
Just recently I had a buyer come in and purchase 25 caps and 25 visors embroidered for their organization. In return I embroidered a simple tote bag with her monogram on it and she was thrilled! Within a couple of days another customer came in that she had recommended to purchase from us. This is exactly how it works! That bag cost me less than $10.00 to purchase and only a few minutes to put on her monogram. The cost of that gift was less than 2% of my sale to her and it brought in another sale that decreased that cost even more!
Giving gifts like this on a steady basis can help you build your business very quickly, can bring in many more sales than you would normally get and can help you put the life back into a very stagnant embroidery business. Try it, you will like it and be rewarded for it!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Management
Starting a new embroidery business today is much easier than it was in the past, but there are financial pitfalls that you need to be aware of and avoid at all cost. Many embroiderers start their business because they want to be able to work from home and have an income without the daily grind of the corporate world. Unfortunately many of these new embroiderers were not business majors in college or have never been exposed to the inner workings of a small business.
Many times a new business owner will not be aware of the pitfalls until they are in business for awhile or seem to slip into financial trouble with their business. The three most common pitfalls are:
- Not knowing what your true costs are for running your business!
- Trying to stay in line with the competition!
- Not keeping track of your time!
Not knowing what your true costs are for running your business!
There are many costs that are associated with running your small business and each and every one of them needs to be accounted for. You must know what all of your true costs are. You have to keep good records of everything that you spend on a daily basis and keep track of it in a spread sheet or an accounting program. This is a must in order to get a handle on all of your true costs. Some of the common ones that often slip by are:
- Keeping track of your mileage when you run to the post office
- Keeping track of your mileage when you go to the office supply store
- Cleaning and maintenance supplies
- The rent of the room or rooms in your home that you are using for your business
- The utilities that are used in your home for your business
All of these factors may seem small but they are part of your costs and without them, you cannot accurately create a pricing structure that is going to help you pay the bills.
Trying to stay in line with the competition!
This is a huge mistake! This is a big pitfall thinking that you have to be in line with the competition on your pricing. Everyone has different expenses and needs and it is impossible for them to charge the same thing that the competition is charging and be able to make any money if that competition has less expenses. This is a tough one for the new embroiderer to understand. You have to charge according to your expenses and what you need as a profit. You cannot work with someone else‚’s pricing.
Many new embroiderers will call all of the local embroiderers and collect their prices lists to find out what they are charging. They will then take all of them and average them out. This is what I did when I first started my business and it caused me to almost lose my business! Not a fun time!
Not keeping track of your time
One of the biggest pitfalls is not keeping track of their time. Many embroiderers do not keep accurate records of all of the time spent on each and every job. Each step of your job is costing you money. Keeping track of how long it takes to prepare your jobs for production, how long to set up your designs, how long it takes to unpack a box of goods that come in, and how long it takes to finish a garment after it comes off the embroidery machine are only a few of the time sucking steps in your business that are many times not accounted for. Most embroiderers charge by the stitch count and all of the other pieces of the job are done for FREE!
So many new embroiderers do not consider what their time is actually worth especially if they are a home-based business. You also need to know how to price your other decorating options and most new embroiderers do not charge enough for those to make a profit and sometimes not even enough to break even.
There are many hidden costs that new embroiderers are not aware when they are first starting their business and keeping a close eye on all of your financial data is the only way to avoid these common pitfalls that can totally ruin your business!
Remember, know what all of your true costs are, create a pricing structure that will pay the bills and create a profit for you and keep track of your time. Don‚’t forget that old saying you heard many years ago, Time is Money. It truly is!
If you are suffering from any of these issues, Learn how to create your own Pricing Structure that will help you increase your business and avoid all of these pitfalls.!
