by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing, Training Embroidery Employees
Do you have high-quality standards set in your embroidery business or are you focused on just getting the job done? Quality is extremely important if you want to build a business that is going to last no matter what state the economy is in.
Many customers are unaware of what good quality is when it pertains to embroidery. When you educate them and show them the difference, they get it. They also realize you want to provide them with the best!
I have certain standards that we have always gone by and if they are not met, the person responsible has to either be retrained so that they can produce the quality that I want or they will no longer have a job. If there has been a mistake on a job or if the job does not meet my standards of quality, I will not charge the customer for the job.
Case in point! We finished a set of 49 football jerseys that I was not happy with. While I was out training a new student, an operator embroidered the school name on the back of half of the jerseys instead of the front below the V of the neck where it belongs. I truly do not know how he ever made such a mistake, but it happened! These were $70.00 jerseys, which the customer supplied, before the numbers and embroidery were ever applied to them. This was an awfully expensive job, but I could not charge the customer for this. The mistake was rectified with the customer's help, but I could not in good conscience charge him for this job.
When I called him and told him about the problem, he was extremely grateful and happy that I was so honest about it. When I told him that I would not be charging him for the job, he was thrilled and said that they would live with the issue and that he would be sending me a lot more work!
If a mistake is made, do not try to pass it off on the customer without them being totally aware of it. Mistakes do happen to all of us, but you must own up to it, keep the customer informed, correct it, and in most cases let him make the decision on how to handle the job. It does not matter how large or how small the job is.
If you do not have high-quality standards set in your embroidery business, you will not stay in business for the long haul. This is especially important.
by The Embroidery Coach | | Training Embroidery Employees
When your business is growing and you start to hire employees, it is very important that you stress upon the new employees the need to be able to work together as a team. If the new applicant is the type of person that gives you any indication that they will not be a team player then that is the wrong type of person to hire.
This week I had a situation with an embroidery business that has 12 employees and they are not growing as they should. The main problem is the lack of ability for them to work together as a team. Many embroidery operators have the attitude that their job is the most important one in the business and the rest of the staff is just there to assist them.
Every Employee Must Feel Important
Each and every one of the positions within the embroidery business is just as important as the embroidery machine operators. Each one of those employees deserves and should command the same respect as the embroidery machine operators. Without the person to log in the orders, plan and prepare the orders, hoop the garments, trim the garments, pack the garments, and wait on the customer, the embroidery machine operator would not be necessary. This is a huge problem in many small to medium shops.
Every employee in the business needs to have a feeling of importance and feel that they are needed and respected. Many times the position of the person that hoops the garments or the person that trims the garments is not treated the same and they feel very inferior. This is most unfortunate. Their job is just as important as the embroidery machine operator.
I was hired by the owner of a medium-sized embroidery shop to re-organize his business so that it would run more efficiently and grow at a faster rate. This has required me to make a lot of changes and not all of the changes have been accepted graciously. The opposition that I have had is that this is the way that we have always done it and it is working, we do not want to change it! Just because that is the way that it has always been done is not necessarily the best or most efficient way to get the same job done.
There have been a lot of changes within the embroidery industry in the past few years and your business needs to change along with it in order to be able to keep up with the rest of the industry. There have been changes in backings, threads, equipment, fabrics and generally the way that business is run today! If you do not change with the industry, you will go out of business and do so very quickly!
Customers are demanding more and more and in a shorter time frame. If you do not meet those demands, someone else will. You must be willing to offer the highest quality products in record time with a smile on your face at all times! In order to accomplish this, you must insist that everyone on your staff work together as a significant part of the team. If this is not possible, hire new employees and develop a team spirit or go out of business; it will be very difficult for you to survive in this new economy!
Developing A Team Spirit
Have a group meeting once or twice per month. Let the employees know what changes you are making or what needs to be changed and let them be apart of the decision making. This is very important. If you have a negative employee that does not want to be apart of the group, it is time to rethink that employee's position. Find out what it is that is bothering them and see if you can help to make them feel part of the team, especially if they are a good worker. It is very difficult to let someone go that has been part of the company for a long time and sometimes totally unnecessary if you can help to make the situation better.
Show your gratitude by bringing in a treat every now and then. This is something that is always appreciated and it also helps to smooth over bad situations at times! It does not have to cost a lot of money, it is the thought that counts and small gestures go a long way!
