Screen Printers Open - A Forum for Screen Printing and Embroidery

There's been a lot of questions about embroidery machines in the last few weeks so I thought I'd start a Pros and Cons thread.

A little background. My wife (audifox) and I started our business in 1994 with a single head embroidery machine. We quickly discovered
that it is very hard to make a living with a single head, and added screen printing and promotional.

Anyway this is about embroidery machines. Most of what has been asked is about single heads so I'll start with them.

There are basically three kinds of commercial machines. Table top, Compact and Full size.
The table top are just that, a small 6 to 15 needle depending on brand. Stands may be available depending on brand.
Built for light duty and have the smallest sewing field. Some aren't big enough to do jacket backs. For me these are
a waste of money if you are serious about getting into embroidery because you will out grow them very quickly.

Compact machines are a little larger usually 9 to 15 needles and the most popular one with first time buyers. Stand is optional.
Depending on brand, most have a sewing field large enough to do a jacket back or full front on sweat shirts, and are made for
normal use in a shop. A good choice for shops wanting to add embroidery.

Full size machines are heavy duty machines with the largest sewing field of the three and their own built in stand and table.
The one I'd recommend if you can afford it. These are made for the long haul and can sew thought almost anything. Ours will
sew through the seam on Carhartt jackets with ease.
Even large multi head shops have one or more of these to do the hard to embroider things, names and sew outs.

1)When adding embroidery to a shop you have to realize doing embroidery is a full time job. Once your client finds out you do
it, they will want it. So if your a one man shop plan on working double shifts or get you wife involved in you business.

2)Figure out what your client will want. If it mostly golf shirts and summer jackets, a compact will do to start you off. Then
once the order get into the hundreds of pcs on a regular bases you can upgrade to a multi head.
Most of what we do is championship jackets, horse blankets and team jackets with names so we run all single heads.
A little fact most multi head owners won't admit to is 3 single head machines will out perform a 4 head by about 30% a day.

When purchasing your first machine be very wary of used single heads. There are two kinds of used machines.
1) A machine that has been worked to death. These are being sold by shops that are very busy and only have one machine.
They will tell you that they are up grading to a multi head to keep up with orders. This is what some of you will experience
after a year of owning your first machine. If the machine was in good shape they would keep it because you will always
need a single head no matter how big you get.
2) These are the gems you want to get. Someone buys a machine thinking they will be rich in 6 months and find out you
have to work at it very hard with a single head. So they sell it. Or a company bought the machine thinking it would be cheaper
to bring embroidery in house and find out it's a full time job and can't find any one qualified to run it. We got our third machine
that way. One of our contact clients thought that they were paying us too much money a year and bought their own machine.
After he kept coming back getting us to help him catch up on jobs he was falling behind on he sold it to us for a $10,000 loss.

There's lots more to say but I'm going to take a break so if you have any question feel free to ask.
 

 



     

Great info guys.

Here's the problem with embroiderers. Most screen printers look for a embroiderer but don't look for a whole sale embroiderer.
So what happens is the embroiderer has his own customers and looks after them first and doesn't look at you as being a customer.
What you need is a company like like 5 B's.  http://www.5bs.com/company_history.htm they have 700 yes 700 embroidery heads
and their minimum order is 6 pcs. They will do your order and have it shipped out in three days. You can spend $15,000 on a good embroidery machine
and have it sit in the corner waiting for that 24 caps and 12 polo's job or send it out to a to a company like 5'Bs and have it in you customers hands in
less than a week. Buying a emb machine to keep a hand full of client happy is crazy.

Now I'm sounding like a hypocrite but the truth of the matter is my wife and I treat all our customers the same but to get our whole sale pricing you have
average $5000 a year with us. We just picked up a new client last we and she's already brought us 16 horse blankest and figures she do over 200 by
Christmas. She qualifies for our whole sale pricing.

Companies like Ash City will embroider their products for you and then ship them out. There are even hat companies that will emb their hats for you, KC caps
up here in Canada. I'm sure there are ones in the States that will as well. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get into the Emb. business. Just do it for the
right reason. It's a full time job and will make you money but someone has to run the machine, if it is you who will be spinning your press?

Here some more history about us. We bought our first screen press , a 4color 1 station POS because I found the wrong screen printing company to print for me in the
90's. After the first 250 pcs job I bought a 6 color 4 station commercial grade manual press. Now I'm sounding like a hypocrite again. But since them I found a real wholesale
screen printer. He has 3 M&R autos and will turn a 1000pc job for me in 2 days. I still have my 6/4 manual and am thinking of getting a Titan because I'm 51 yrs old
with a bad back. I never turn away any work but that doesn't mean I do all the work. I have 3 orders for beer koozie 1 order for pens and some stickers being done
and I won't have touched any of them until I hand them to the customers.
I was told a long time ago to work smarter not harder and I hope I'm passing some of what I've learned over the past 17 yrs on to some of you so
you don't have to make the same mistake I did when we start. 



 

they have 700 yes 700 embroidery heads

Their "About Us" page says "CAPACITY: 5B?s has over 300 embroidery heads, operating 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. Warehousing is also available in our 170,000 square foot facility."

Now I'm sounding like a hypocrite but the truth of the matter is my wife and I treat all our customers the same but to get our whole sale pricing you have
average $5000 a year with us. We just picked up a new client last we and she's already brought us 16 horse blankest and figures she do over 200 by Christmas. She qualifies for our whole sale pricing.

Any chance of posting some pics of the horse blankets? I would like to see what you do with them.

Those are really nice. 

That is some nice looking work Stitch..

Full embroidery. There are 80,000 stitches in the front logo and 87,000 in the back. Some of the other ones we do are applique