by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
We are about to say goodbye to 2012 and welcome to 2013! This is the time when we need to look back on the old year and see what worked and what did not work! What do you need to do in your personal life or business to make the necessary changes in the areas that did not work? Is it time to let go of some of the things that did not work?
2012 was a year that was very good and yet it was a challenging year for me! There have been so many changes in my life and I have felt like there have been so many new beginnings from those changes and I am happy to say that in 2013 I expect to see the fruits of the labor from all of those changes.
I have always done a lot of planning and I try to work my plans but sometimes our plans just do not work out the way that we expect no matter how hard we try!
When you find an area in your life or your business that is not working the way that you think that it should, it is time to stop and take a good look at the situation and find out what you need to do to make the necessary change or perhaps you need to let it go.
This was one of those years for me. I had many changes that took place in my life that I had not planned for, but there were three changes that were major that affected both my personal life and my business in ways that I would not have imagined. I would like to share these with you.
- Went back to work to manage my former embroidery business
- I had to build a new Embroidery Training membership site
- Surgery for a knee replacement
Managing My Old Embroidery Business!
One morning in January 2012 I received a phone call from the gentleman that had purchased my embroidery business. The business was not making the kind of money that we was expecting and he was having a lot of problems with the employees. He was an absentee owner and he made some drastic changes to the business when he purchased it and closed the retail side of the business. The business seemed to be OK for while, but now several years later, he was extremely frustrated and about ready to close the doors. He wanted me to come in and do an evaluation of the business and let him know what it was that needed to be done to solve the problems and get the business back on track.
This was a real challenge for me, not because of the evaluation, but knowing what he really wanted was for me to fix all of the problems of the business and then stay on to manage the business. I knew that I could give him a great evaluation and let him know what he had to do to make the changes, but giving up some of the hours that I needed to spend on my embroidery training business so that I could fix his business, was a really tough decision for me to make.
I called my business coach and discussed it with her. She told me to evaluate my business and my personal life to see if this was going to be a benefit or a detriment. I wrestled with this decision for two weeks before I finally made my decision to give it a try for a few weeks and see what I could do to improve this business. I also decided that I would share this experience with my students so they could also learn from this business makeover. It is now 11 months later and I am still there.
Changes That I Made In This Business!
During this time I have sold old equipment, changed the work flow, added new production flow forms that must be followed, let go of employees that were not happy or causing dissension among the other employees and retrained the remaining employees. The business was totally divided into departments and the employees stayed in their particular departments and were not willing to cross the line to help in another department when it was necessary. There was no teamwork whatsoever among these employees.
This business was strictly a contract embroidery shop and it is almost impossible for a small embroidery business or even a medium sized embroidery business to survive on contract work alone. It needs some retail sales to help balance out the money flow especially during the lean times and there are lean times or months in almost every embroidery business.
I have also had the opportunity to work with each employee personally and have found out where all of their strengths and weaknesses are. This has allowed me to move them around in areas that they are excelling in and are much happier.
The business now has less employees, there is no division within the company and the production has greatly increased with the current employees. These remaining employees are now happy and are very willing to work as a team and it will be easier to train new employees because of all of the procedures that are now set in place. Do you have written procedures for each area of your business?
Plans For More Changes In 2013
I have more changes planned in 2013 for this business. I am in the process of opening up a retail area in the business and the opening is set for the end of January. I have the retail area 
all planned out and am in the process of getting the samples and the display equipment together. I am creating wall samples to make it easy for the customers to pick out exactly what they want for embroidery. It is going to save a lot of time for both the customer and the salesperson. When they are finished, I will take pictures and share them with you. I will tell you exactly how I created them so that you can duplicate what I have done for your own business.
I am also installing a new accounting system to get the New Year started off in the right direction with the accounting and the work flow. The changes that I have already made have been very positive and the owner is pleased with the progress. The employees that are still there are happy and are very willing to work as a team! I will not be leaving there any time soon. I have a lot that I want to accomplish and I want to see this business become very profitable and it is now moving in the right direction.
In the next Ezine, I will be sharing with you the next major change that affected by business!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
There are many ways to market your embroidery business but first I want to start out by giving you a few pointers about increasing the sales to your current customers and then I will talk about prospecting for new customers. It is much easier and more cost effective to market to your current customers than always trying to find new ones! This is the first step in starting to market your embroidery business.
Increasing customer sales with your current customer base is all about creating relationships. Creating good customer relationships is the most important duty that you have as a business owner and this is something that does not cost a lot of money. Many times it is the little unexpected things that we do that mean the most and keeps those customers coming back to our business over and over!
I purchased a program from a large company and was shocked when I received a handwritten Thank you note in the mail. I have to tell you, I was extremely impressed at this gesture! Just a simple thank you card that only took the salesperson a couple of minutes to write meant a lot to me and I will remember that the next time that I decide to order another program.
Here are some simple ways for you to increase your customer sales.
- Offer Exceptional Customer Service
- More Low Cost-High Profit Services To Your Existing Customers
- Build A Relationship With Existing And Former Customers
- Plan A Customer Appreciation Night
- Create A Web Presence
- Offer More Than One Price Level Of Products
There are several Low Cost Methods of prospecting for new customers.
- Networking Off Line and On Line
- Donate Products & Services to Charity for Fund Raising Events
- Ask For Referrals
- Attend Trade shows in Your Niche
- Offer to Trade Your Products & Services
- Press Releases
I will go over each of the simple ways to increase your customer sales and explain how to prospect for new customers. They can be done at the same time and many of them can be done on a daily basis as you are working within your business.
Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.
~Bruce Henderson~
Make Your Business Stand Out From The Crowd
Is there a service or a process that you can offer your customers that they cannot get from any of your competition? What is it that you can do to be more efficient than the competition? It is usually better to focus on being different in a particular market rather than trying to compete directly. Find a unique strategy or a way to position your products or your business differently in your current market place.
Spend some time educating your customers about the benefits, services and value that they will be receiving by doing business with you. Point out to them what you are doing that the competition is not doing. You do not have to say that the competition is not doing such and such; you just have to point out what you are doing that makes you different or better!
You cannot compete with the big manufacturers or embroiderers that have many multi-head machines when you are only a small shop with one or two heads. Don't even try. You must focus on what you do best in your smaller market. If you focus on improving one step or one process that can make you more efficient then this alone will help to make you more profitable!
Those large shops normally are not offering the type of customer service that you can offer. This can set you far above the larger shops and help to increase your customer sales. I have seen this many times. Many of the larger shops have systems all set that they will not steer away from, and they are usually profit focused instead of customer focused.
In order to be successful in this business, you must be customer focused. The profits will follow if that is the case! By finding your own unique way to stand out in the crowd, you will increase your customer sales naturally.
Offering Exceptional Customer Service to all of your embroidery customers will make you stand out and is extremely important in this competitive market place today!
Click here for more information on How To Market Your Embroidery Business!
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!
all planned out and am in the process of getting the samples and the display equipment together. I am creating wall samples to make it easy for the customers to pick out exactly what they want for embroidery. It is going to save a lot of time for both the customer and the salesperson. When they are finished, I will take pictures and share them with you. I will tell you exactly how I created them so that you can duplicate what I have done for your own business.