Author Topic: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons (Read 1654 times)

preston · « **Reply #30 on:** November 04, 2011, 03:33:32 PM »

Quote from: stitch101 on November 04, 2011, 02:24:02 PM

Preston I was just on Mesa's web site looking for more info on the highlander you are look to buy.
What is the difference in price between the SWF/E-T1501 the full size single head and the Highland you are looking at?
They have a great price on the SWF/E-T1501.

You being in Texas there has to be a lot of rodeos, dirt tracks(sprint car ect.)
and other things involving championship jackets. The reason I bring this up is these are the garments that bring in the best prices
Because every jacket is different. The logo on them stays the same but the championship changes. IE Bull rider of the year, Bareback champion
The shops with mulit heads hate doing these because they have to do them 1 at a time and because the are all different you can
charge more than lets say a basketball team buys 15 jackets that are all the same.

I haven't seen the Highlander in person but from what I see on the net if you specialized in these type of garments you would wear
that machine out in not time and the space between the side is rather small to try and stuff a melton and leather jacket in.
Another problem with smaller machines and garment like jackets, coveralls ect is if the tubular arms can pass over the sides of the
machine it can squeeze the garment and pop the hoop. This is why in most advertisement for these small machines they show them
with the hat frame on them it make the machine look like it has more room than it really does.

I'd hate to see you buy an emb. machine that won't bring you in the most money. And stay away from hats they take just as long to
sew out as a left chest on a $100 jacket and bring in a few bucks per hat. Audra hate hats and only does them for our good customers.

I may be wrong about the highlander, it may be stronger than it looks but these are the things I'd be checking out before I bought one.

Mesa is one of the two companies in the U.S that made SWF what it is today. Now SWF has decided to strike out on their own and quit using distributors so you will see SWF East go away and Mesa is stopping distribution of them.

The Highland is being made for Mesa to their specs. Mesa has 20 years in the embroidery machine business so I am positive they are not going to sell crap. The only difference between the Highland and the SWF is the SWF is 200 stitches per minute faster, can store 2 million stitches instead of just 1 million like the Highland and the SWF comes with a fast change hat driver.

I could get the SWF from them as they do still have one in stock but once they run out of circuit boards it is not certain that SWF will sell them any more to use for service.

The main thing is I trust Mesa and I trust Steve (one of the owners of Mesa). If where not for that then I would be looking at something else.

And we will be doing hats from time to time as a service to some of our existing customers.

stitch101 · « **Reply #31 on:** November 04, 2011, 03:56:53 PM »

I hear what your saying. If you trust Steve then that is half the battle won. My biggest concern is the size of the machine.

We have one of the compact machines and yes it works fine for what we use it for. Right now my wife is emb. Dress shirt for
the high school music department and it's doing it's job. But we also have two full size machines for the bigger things like
work wear, winter jackets(I know you won't be doing too many of those

), sports bags all the thing people don't think of
when they look at when buying their first machine. And when you only have one its best to have one that will do everything.

Does Mesa have this machine with out the chenelle attachment? That would be a good first machine. It looks like it would do
anything you would ever be asked to embroider.

preston · « **Reply #32 on:** November 04, 2011, 04:20:42 PM »

Quote from: stitch101 on November 04, 2011, 03:56:53 PM

Does Mesa have this machine with out the chenelle attachment?

Currently, no.

bj · « **Reply #33 on:** November 04, 2011, 04:43:46 PM »

I think that if you plan on doing embroidery production in house you should also do hats. I know they are a pain but most people ask for hats along with their left chest orders. Also, learning to do the puff/foam embroidery which gives you an edge over your competitors that don't want to mess with it. One of my customers, i have noticed in just this past year 90% of his orders now that I digitize for him are for puff hats. He works with a lot of schools and that must be what they are into right now. I just think get the most training you can out of them and focus on the hat training so they can give you as many tips as possible so you don't struggle later down the line.

stitch101 · « **Reply #34 on:** November 04, 2011, 06:03:38 PM »

The thing with hats is people don't want to spend much money on them. So if you have a 12 head and it take 5 minutes to sew out
a dozen hat you can make money at it. In an hour you can do about 11 dozen (you have to allow time for loading and unloading.)
So if you make $2 profit per hat you'd be making $264/hr
If you have a single head and it takes 5 minutes to sew out one hat well you get my point.

Now take that same 5 minutes and sew the same logo on a $30 garment or a $100 jacket.
Doing the occasional order of hats is fine but I've seen new embroidery companies try and corner the market on hats
and work their asses off for a few hundred dollars.
If you get an order for 100s of hats contract it out to the multi head shop and do the jobs that make you money in house.

preston · « **Reply #35 on:** November 04, 2011, 07:16:49 PM »

Quote from: stitch101 on November 04, 2011, 06:03:38 PM

The thing with hats is people don't want to spend much money on them. So if you have a 12 head and it take 5 minutes to sew out
a dozen hat you can make money at it. In an hour you can do about 11 dozen (you have to allow time for loading and unloading.)
So if you make $2 profit per hat you'd be making $264/hr
If you have a single head and it takes 5 minutes to sew out one hat well you get my point.

Now take that same 5 minutes and sew the same logo on a $30 garment or a $100 jacket.
Doing the occasional order of hats is fine but I've seen new embroidery companies try and corner the market on hats
and work their asses off for a few hundred dollars.
If you get an order for 100s of hats contract it out to the multi head shop and do the jobs that make you money in house.

True but the same argument can be why waste your time with embroidery at all when you can print and make way more an hour. The bottom line is if you have a line of $100 jacket customer that will keep your machine running all the time then that is great but if not are you just going to let it sit there doing nothing waiting on the next $30 to $100 one item job? I don't think so. We are looking to add embroidery as an up sell service and if we are lucky enough to get loaded up with all $100 per garment type embroidery jobs then fine. I will just buy more machines. But if a customer wants some hats also we will do them as well.

On the flip side, you screw up a hat and you are only out a couple of bucks. You screw up a $100 jacket and you just lost your ass.

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Author Topic: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons (Read 1654 times)

preston

Re: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons

stitch101

Re: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons

preston

Re: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons

bj

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stitch101

Re: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons

preston

Re: Embroidery Machines Pros and Cons