Organizing your embroidery business to run smoothly is not a hard job. Organization is a huge subject in itself, but there are simple things that I do to keep myself organized. In this first part, I will talk about how I organize all the information I have collected and use in my embroidery business. Most of this information is used in running your embroidery business.
I have all of the information that I need organized in notebooks which are stored in the areas where they are used. For example: I have a large notebook of hooping information that I have collected stored in the hooping area where it is easy to grab when I need to refer to it. I have it divided up into sections such as placement locations, hooping techniques for different types of garments, special applications, and others.
I started going thru the magazines many years ago tearing out the articles that I wanted to keep and filed them in a folder marked with whatever the subject was. I have them on every subject that would be applicable to the embroidery business and business in general. I then throw out the magazine. I do not keep them at all anymore. I had boxes of magazines that were not doing me any good because I did not know which one to grab when I needed it. I still do that to this day. Most of the articles that they have today have been repeated so many times that I don‚’t even bother with most of them anymore, but this is not true for the new embroiderer.
I treat the information that comes into the computer the same way. I print out a copy, I cannot read on the computer directly, and file it within the same file folders as the articles from the magazines.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business. Tomorrow we will get into organizing the customer design information for your business.