by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Planning
Having your business well organized and planned out is very important and a must if you want to profit in your embroidery business! I want to share with you the 9 steps that it takes in planning for a successful and profitable embroidery business!
Before I get started, I want to ask you a few very important questions, questions that you need to think seriously about. I also want to tell you that at the end of this presentation, I will be sharing an opportunity with you that if you take me up on it, you will be able to get your business organized much quicker and will have all of the tools to work with in order to be able to do it more efficiently. This will be huge in being able to get your business set up properly and get you on the right path to profit in your embroidery business.
- About how much planning do you think do you for your business on a daily basis?
- Do you have a Business Plan, One that you can actually use to run your business?
- Do you have a Marketing Plan?
- Do you have Specific Goals for your business?
- Is your embroidery business on track for meeting its goals this year?
- Do you have a plan in place for the lean times?
- Do you have a plan for each area of your business?
And the most important question of all!
- Do you run your business or does your business run you?
Planning for your Embroidery Business is one of the most important functions that you can perform in your business. Every single area within your business needs a plan, not only the one in your head but one written on paper.
Without a plan in place, we wander aimlessly through our day taking care of whatever problem comes across our path. The phone rings, you handle that problem, a customer comes in the door, you take care of that person, the day goes by in just this manner and before you know it, the day is gone and you feel like you have accomplished nothing.
How do I know this, I have been very guilty of this. Before I started planning out my entire business, I just handled each issue as it showed up and hoped at the end of the month I had enough money to pay the bills! This is not the way to run a business!
Your business is a very serious venture and if you do not plan it out, you are just running a hobby and you would be better off doing something else with your time unless, of course, this is the kind of life that you want! For me, I want to know what I am doing and what I need to do each day of my week and month.
I wake up each morning with my plan in place and I know exactly what I have to get done that day and I do whatever I can to get it accomplished. Does it always happen, No, but I sure do work at it hard enough and try to get it all accomplished. Without a written plan, I would not know what I had to get done by the end of this week or this month in order to reach my goal.
If you have your goals set and your plan together it is much easier to get through your day. Crazy things happen at times that put a stumbling block in front of you, but you still try to get around that block! This is the time when you have to make adjustments
I Started With No Business Plan
You may have heard me talk about how I started my business with no plan. I had no plan of any kind! I would sort of plan out my next day but it was only a to-do list that usually did not mean much of anything. If it got through my to-do list, OK, if I did not, oh well, I just did not get it done!
I did not even know what a business plan was. It was not until I had to go to the bank to borrow some money that I found out about a business plan. I also found out that I could not borrow any money without a business plan. They also wanted a business plan that made sense, one that I was going to follow.
I went to the Small Business Administration because that is what the bank told me to do. This is where I started learning how to create a Business Plan. I also worked with my accountant to help me get through my first one. It was really tough for me and took a huge amount of time. They required that I do a ton of research and I had to create a lot of financial data for them. I had not even heard of most of the statements that they required that I create.
At that time, I had no accountant and was not at all familiar with all of the statements that they were talking about. They wanted 3 years of projections, 3 years of Cash Flow statements, A Balance Sheet, my current Income statement, What was that? I was clueless!
Going through this entire process prompted me to go to our local college and take accounting courses. I found them very interesting and I learned a ton about business that was totally foreign to me. I also took Business Law and Business Report Writing. I finally felt a little more qualified to run a business and I understood the 9 steps to profit in your embroidery business!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
It looks like Face Masks are here to stay for a while in many parts of the country and the world. David wrote an article that may be very helpful to you if you are asked to embroider on face masks. He has 2 different options for hooping them with tips for using each one.
Option #1 – He uses a standard 12-centimeter round tubular hoop and in Option #2 he uses a Cap Frame.
Both options work and it made the embroidery on face masks simple when he perfected the process.
In his example, the logo is almost 3 inches long and we had a large order of them to embroider. Click the link below to download the article to read. If you have an order to embroider on face masks, this article will work to make it easy for you.
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Production
I found this new magnifying light that is great tool to use to remove stitches. I am so excited about this light and I want to share it with you. I have used many different tools in the past for removing stitches, but this is the best tool to remove stitches that I have found. You can stand it on the floor and move it anyplace that you want or you can remove the extender bar and place it on your table right in front of you.
Removing stitches is not a fun thing to do, but at times we all have to do it and you want to make the job as easy as possible and with less time. This tool makes it easy to use and see exactly what you are doing. It also helps to get a closer view to avoid creating holes in the fabric.
The ones in the past that I have used, I had to clamp them to the table and they were not always convenient. This one is much more convenient and it less intrusive than the standard fluorescent magnifying lamps to remove stitches.
It has variable light intensity with 3 different settings. I found this to be very helpful. The magnification is 2.5 times and it made it very easy to see the stitches and remove them. Here are some pictures of David using the lamp. You can see him using the seam ripper as well as
“Peggys” Stitch Eraser! Peggy and I became good friends a long time ago!
When David tested it out, he was very excited when he realized how easy it was to see the stitches and be able to remove the stitches without creating holes in the fabric. Click on the picture to view it full size.
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
How Has The Pandemic Affected Your Embroidery Business? How has the pandemic affected you personally? Have you spent much time thinking about this and how you are going to make changes to be able to cope ? Do you know how to hang on to your embroidery business during these uncertain times?
Do you still have the same amount of business and customers that you had before the pandemic started? Have you noticed any attitude change in your customers and prospects? Are they giving you unreasonable requests?
I have heard a lot of embroiderers say that their customers are getting obnoxious and more demanding than ever. Some embroiderers are being treated like servants and are expected to continue to do more and work more and in today's' world they are being bullied into lowering their prices.
Are you wondering how you to deal with all of these situations right now? How should you hang on to your embroidery business? What you should do right now to hang on to your embroidery business and keep your customers coming back for more during these uncertain times?
No. 1 – PLEASE, do not get caught in this pricing trap. DO NOT LOWER YOUR PRICES to get the work! You will go out of business quicker than any thing. With the way that prices are increasing to all of us, you are going to have to raise your prices as well. We all have to pay our bills. All of our supplies and products that we have to purchase to do business with and resell to our customers are increasing in price and you cannot absorb those price increases. You must adjust your pricing and get your pricing structure created to work during this time.
No. 2 – Keep in touch with your customers. You want your customers to realize how important they are to you and how you value their business. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business and deserve your best. If you have not focused on your customer list and keeping in touch with them, stay tuned to my next post. I will explain how to get started with it so you can get that hang on to your embroidery business!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Production
Does the bobbin area in your embroidery machine look like this? Embroidery Machine Maintenance is a must and something that none of us want to deal with but in order to get the maximum efficiency from our equipment this is a must. It makes no difference if you are a sole person with a single head or a large multi-head production shop. Dealing with constant thread breaks or machine downtime is both very costly and annoying. Our customers don‚’t want to hear that you can‚’t do their job today because your machine is down. Most of the time this can be prevented with routine maintenance. It only takes a few minutes each week for each head and is easy to keep up with once you get it worked into your daily and weekly schedule.
I have found that stopping production early on a Friday afternoon to do all of my weekly maintenance pays large dividends the following week. It really helps to start the new week out on Monday morning knowing that all of my equipment is in tip-top shape and I can begin production immediately without the fear that the machine is going to break down right in the middle of a job.
The first thing that you should do every morning before you start production is to remove the needle plate and the bobbin case. Brush or blow out the Rotary Hook and Knife area. Oil the hook. This is done by placing one drop of oil, and I do mean one drop, (I use the small needle point applicator for this) on the rail of the hook just outside the bobbin case. Replace the needle plate and bobbin case and you are ready to begin.
Plan out all of your Embroidery machine maintenance and schedule your daily, weekly and monthly maintenance just like any other appointment. This is a very important habit that needs to be developed and a habit that will save you a lot of down time and frustration.
Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach
