Thinking of Starting a Business

Lucrative business depends on how good you are. You say you are in a small town, then its easy to get known. Once people know you then they will come to you. ( If you do a good job and your prices are not too high ). The internet competition is still there but people like to have personal contact.
I am in a similar situation. People come into my shop, sometimes saying its cheaper over the internet. I always turn it back to them and ask if they have seen the shirts, or embroidery. What are the hidden costs? Can they get a small repeat order if they need some extras doing? What are the transport costs? etc etc. In the end the internet price wont be far off your price.
How many machines are you buying? A one head machine is OK for staters but you wont make much money from it, you will need to get a 4 head or bigger when things pick up.
My 2 cents worth, but good luck.
Earl

Yes, i agree with Earl, the prices on internet may be less but when you combine with all the hidden costs, they increase from your local shop prices........

Also local shop have advantage of good communication....

Hi, then you will need to have a complete Embrodiery digitizing software to start your business. I do have a complete set of Artist Pulse Tajima DGML Embrodiery Digitizing software version 9.1 rev A/ and rev J by Hirsh.
Drop me an email at philoseet@yahoo.com. we can discuss the price.
I am located in Asia.

myserver, I will have to respectfully disagree about needing digitizing software to start your business.

Learning digitizing is something that can not be learned or mastered overnite. Find you a highly recommended digitizer. If you are just starting out I would focus my energies on learning every aspect of the machine you are using and about the in and outs of the business as a whole. That is my humble opinion.

I wasn't going to jump in on this one, but keeping my mouth shut is NOT one of my specialties. lol.

Lets take this down one notch at a time.

Internet competition is a funny thing, while almost all of your customers will complain about a cheaper price they saw online, when it comes down to it, with something custom, they want it live in person. Over the internet, who knows what kind of quality they are going to get, or if its even going to be done in the United States, There are a few major online embroidery places that have US addresses, but it is all done in india, haiti, china, etc... Hence the cheap price. Plus, the internet guys are going to charge shipping, so there goes your cheaper price.

Earl makes a great point too, if you are in small town america, its easy to get known, and grab business from all around. I am in somewhat small town, and I get a ton of local business.

Another great point made by earl which I 100% agree with, is the machine / head issue. You CAN make money with a single head, its how I started out. A single head will make you work your tail off for your money, if you are short on cash though, sometimes its the only way to start. I didn't start to make REAL money until I got a 6 head. Figure this, on a single head, you push the start button once, you get one item, perhaps that item takes 10 minutes to sew (using round numbers for easy math) then there are 50 people for a little league team (not uncommon) counting kids, coaches, parents, etc.... 50 items for small town USA sports team is an easy number to rack-up. So at 10 minutes thats 500 minutes, or just over 8 hours, not counting the "cleaning" that may be required tearing / trimming backing, snipping jumps, etc.... Now take a 6 head, and your job is done in 90 minutes. I'm NOT trying to discourage OR scare you, I'm simply trying to give you some reality. Do I think you NEED a 6 head to start, absolutely not. A single is fine, however, the bigger the machine, the easier life gets. As far as brand, for a single, buy a Tajima. I'm not going into why, just trust me. They're fantastic machines.

Now as far as what myserver and twok4hd said, I don't completely agree with either. You definitely DO NOT need a fabulous Pulse system, until you get your act together, and figure yourself out, contract out your digitizing, there are a million digitzers on here, just make sure you are getting a good US / Canadian based digitizer, there are lots that have a US address and phone # but all send their digitizing overseas, god knows what quality you could end up with. BEWARE. However, one piece of software I DO think you should get is at least a basic lettering software, for doing team names, player numbers, etc... Most of them are way easy to use / learn, and are relatively inexpensive.

A little about me:
I started my embroidery business by total accident, my grandmother wanted a viking embroidery machine to tinker with, so for her birthday my mother bought her one, well, she had no clue how to use a computerized sewing machine. So I started to show her. At the time I was in school at Culinary Institute of America. We used to have to wear our chef's whites to ever class, our name was embroidered on all our jackets, well, as we either lost, or wore out our stuff, the school store used to charge a bunch of broke college kids $50 for a chef's jacket. Thats where I got the idea, I used to tell everyone run down to Work n' gear, grab a white dickies chef jacket for $20 give it to me, and I'll charge you $5 for the embroidery. Thus my business was born. I started out with a single needle home machine, today, 10 years later, I run over 400 heads, and have a laser bridge.

I don't want to say its all skill, even though I like to think that I am that good at times, if you ask me, it comes down to an idea, some creativity, hard work, and a little plain ol' dumb luck.

Whelp, I've rambled on enough now ...
Good luck in whatever you do,
Any other questions, just ask me.

-- Eric
:-)

I guess I wasn't real clear earlier. One of my many faults :-) (just ask my wife). Eric is correct. At a minimum you need a lettering software not a full blown version of a digitizing software.

agreed, lettering is the way to go, when i started out i tried to run a machine and digitize, i still cant digitize, but i can run a machine. i started with a single head, just like eric, bought another single head. than bought a 6 head. than bought another 6. if you ask me honestly, if i could do it all over again, i would of bought a 4 head to start. A good single head is about 8500 used i think, and a good 4 head is about 14,000 when you avg that out it would cost you 32,000 to buy 4 single heads and only 14 to buy 4. As for brand im not going into it, tajima like eric said.

i do not do website stuff so im going to shut up now.

but its true everyone starts somewhere. cept i dont have a laser applique machine like some ppl lol:P..

Hey hey hey ... I'm a big boy, that likes big toys.

The accountant is going to pitch a fit over it though, but oh well.

Hey Tyrk

I have my laser connected to tajima's, with the manual etching station.

Tajima doesn't make lasers though, they sell another brand of laser called the Se-It, however, mine is not a Seit , mine is a Proel, Itialian made laser, with a bigger cutting field, and slightly more power than the seit. Its a touch slower than the seit, though, but at full power I can cut leather.

YES! I LOVE IT! It makes applique incredibly easy, it has tripled (or more) my hoodie business, I can do tri-layer chenille applique in about 20-30 minutes, versus 90 after you tinker with the placement, tackdown, adhesion, then finally satin stitch. You just lay the material over the shirt, and its does a tackdown, cuts, about 20 seconds per shirt, peel the excess away, and Viola! Although, ALWAYS do a test shirt first, if your laser power isn't set right its very easy to cut through the shirt, trust me, it was a heck of a learning curve, ruined countless things till we got the hang of it. LOL.

These pics were taken the day the installed it, they were testing the laser on the hooped stabilizer here:

The T-Bars in from of the machine are for larger items, eg, when I do hoodies I have these, the carriage presents itself forward, and these offer support for the hoop to ride along so the laser can come by and cut them accurately:

The whole setup-end to end. There is also a table that goes under where the laser is parked so I can etch on denim, fleece, cut freestanding applique, and a bunch of other cool stuff:

What can I say ... I'm a sucker for toys.... LOL

BTW, got your e-mail about the barudan, Do I know you? Your name looks awfully familiar, have I done work for you? I keep trying to email you back, but it keeps getting bounced. Pls call me on my cell in the morning.

WOW .... I'm officially suffering from machine envy.... Thats Incredible.

I will call you in the a.m.

Yes I do believe you've done work for us before.

I wouldn't look at internet businesses as competition but as another venue you might explore. We do both local and internet business. We are also in a fairly small area. I started locally but found it very hard to get good customers partly because it a very tight business comunity that will only order from whoever their friend orders from. The internet gave me a chance to grow my business that I wouldn't have had locally and because of that our profits are way up without having to sacrifice our level of quality and customer service.

WOW!! I want that set up! :P

We are in a small town and as hard as we try we can not get some of the local business (ie - the school) because the "internet is cheaper" They say the shirt cost $8 a piece compared to us asking $8.50, with no mention how much it is costing them to have 100+ shirts shipped! We get some of the individual clubs and groups... so that helps! We also get some of the area schools and such. Some of our local business have been good to us too.

A lot of foot work helps... get out there and talk to ppl, give them samples when you can. Like someone else already said, nothing beats personalization!! I have a 2 head machine with only one reliable head, but I make it work! We get just a little more cashflow and we will be upgrading to a new 2 head or a 4 head machine!! We also screen print, so we have to trade off what side gets the new toys! :P

Good Luck!
Laurie

Eric, do you have a full time person who does nothing but service all of those machines, or do you leave it up to the operators? If I am ever up your way I would love a tour of the place.

Well, guys, I have three machines and work out of my home. I turn down work everyday. My niche is work from other shops. I digitize and do mainly small to mid size runs (12-600) for shops that can't or don't want to be bothered by these. I like working from home, have no intention of getting any bigger, and make a good living. It can be done without a ton of money and still be fun and profitable. Since I don't have to deal with the public that much, there isn't really any downtime. Most just send me a jpg of the logo, drop ship their stuff to me, and pick it up when I'm done. So, in answer to your question, you can make a go if it in any size town IF you have a target market and good business plan. A shotgun approach(any and all jobs) seems like a hard life to me:)

Not Necessarily. There is a lot of quality work done via internet with little or no communication gap. When you have got phones emails and other tools, i do not think that the costs saving is not worth a try. Our customers are very satisifed with us even we are working overseas.

So it all depends on company to company. Some are working from home and have not got the real expertise of running a business.

Eltri, I am not following your numbers here. If you by the shirt for 10.00 and sell it for 25.00 after you embroidery it, that would be 15.00 profit per shirt. Did I not read something right?

If the logo is 10,000 stitches, I would charge at least 7.00 (Possibly more) per shirt for the embroidery. Got to remember, that the machine has to produce so many $ per hour to cover your overhead. A 10,000 stitch logo takes a minimum of 10 minutes if you are running the machine at 1000 spm. Then you have to factor trims and color changes depending on the logo. We just did some shirts that had a logo under 4000 stitches and it took 8 1/2 minutes to run it because of all the trims and color changes. I could see a complex logo of 10,000 stitches taking 12 to 14 minutes or more. At that pace the most you could do is 4 shirts in an hour, IF you don't have any other problems. So I figure that would be 60.00 per hour. We average 80.00 to 100.00 per hour when doing shirts on our single head. That is for the markup of the garment and the embroidery cost. Most logos that we have done are under 5000 stitches and usually average 5 to 6 minutes run time.

We run an Barudan Elite Pro II and it is a real workhorse.

Good luck

if you need a cheaper quality digitiser, you can drop me a line and we will send you the disc within 24 hours and get response within 16 hours, my email is iamyourdigitizer@gmail.com. Thank you.

Hey there Eltri ... Sorry for the delay, Just getting back from Vacation.

I'm not going to be horribly redundant, because two4hd pretty much nailed it.

You have SO many factors going on here. The answers to all of your questions are a definite maybe. lol

I am going to assume you are going direct to RETAIL? Meaning you buy a "blank" embroider it, and sell it direct to a consumer? With that being said, it dpends on your market. Some places can get $20 or $30 for a cap, Others could only dream of that.

Wit that said:

There are a MILLION pricing stragegies. I am a wholesale & retail embroiderer. Unlike a lot of people in biz I very very very rarely do contract. I am a supplier / embroiderer. Meaning I make money on the garment as well as the embroidery. Typically anything under 10,000 stitches, which is MOST logo's I charge $1 per thousand, PLUS the markup of the garment.

Typically speaking good embroiderers make $100 an hour per head. Sometimes its more, sometimes less. However, thats your target number. Where you run a single, it may be a little less, just cause of the "turn time" and doing a lot of one-offs and two-offs KILLS your profits real fast. Hence why the price of onesies and twosies are astronomical.

You have to stay around your competition. I love selling Caps, because I buy them direct from india, and pay about 60 cents each, and I sell them $8 to $20 bucks each, depending on if its wholesale, or direct to retail.

Hope this helps.

Yes indeed ... Good Point Nathan!

Forgot that one!

Something that you need to look at is turn around time. If for example you buy a single head then you are going to have a very long turn around time for a job of 300 pieces or so. I have been in this business for a long time and you can't really make "good money" with just a single head.

If you try to do a 300 piece order with 5000 stitches on a single head running at 800 stitches per minute (a comfortable speed) it will take you approximately 7 minutes with your change out time. So if your doing a run every 7 minutes then you can do 8 runs per hour. That is approx. 64 runs in an 8 hour day. At that rate it will take you almost the whole week to do that job. Not a very quick turn around time for a job of 300 pieces. And it seems like one of the selling point for Retail is turn around time.

Now if you take a two head you will cut that time in half.