# Talk about printing money, Embroidery is it



## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

I know there is a lot of profit margin in garment printing, whether it be screen printing, DTG, or transfers. But holy cow, embroidery is an even bigger hit with a lot less setup and effort. 

Consider this. If you print a basic white tshirt and sell it wholesale or retail you will make between $5 and $15 per shirt. This is for the basic custom design for a customer, not the branded design that some are doing. That is a different animal. 

Consider the same sale with embroidery. The cost of the basic garment is usually more but the cost of supplies to do the work is less. The minimum gross profit on an embroidered shirt starts around $10 and goes up to $20 and sometimes even more. Here are a couple of examples from our production. 


Safety Green T's at $3.46 each plus shipping plus printing. We sold them for $9 each. We made about $5 on each shirt. Not too bad a profit. We did 50 shirts and made $250GP
Polo Shirts with a stripe on the collar and sleeve at $6.23 each plus shipping plus embroidery. We sold them for $30 each with a gross profit of about $22 each. We did 16 shirts and made $352GP
So, for each 2 embroidered shirts I have to do 9 printed shirts to get the same gross profit. Here is the best part. In each of these cases our customers didn't shop us around. Even better they were both short on time so we were able to charge a higher price for the 'rush' order that our competition wouldn't touch.


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## ftembroidery (Nov 25, 2006)

We do both embroidery & screen printing as well. You need to consider something when determining the profitability of one over the other. 

Now, you may be thinking, ok....he's going to talk about the cost of the embroidery machines vs. the cost of a press, or maybe the cost of the digitizing software compared to the graphics program a screen printer will use. No, I'm not. Anyone in the industry knows it's far more expensive to set up an embroidery business from scratch than it is a textile screen printing business from scratch.

Consider your TIME. How many seconds did it take you to load a shirt, print it, drop it on the dryers belt and then put it in a box. Now stop and remember how long it took to hoop the shirt, put it on the machine, wait while it sewed out, remove it from the machine, remove the excess backing material, steam out the hoop mark (if necessary) and put it in a box. 

Once you've considered your TIME investment, I think you'll see that screen printing is quite profitable. On your press, the shirt is loaded, printed and unloaded and placed on the dryer belt in "about" 1 or 2 minutes. If you have a single-head embroidery machine, it'll run up to 1200 stitches per minute and multi-head machines are considereably slower, often only 650 SPM. An "average" small left breast business logo is often 10-12000 stitches. That's anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes or more sewing time depending upon sewing speed.

The only thing that every one of us has in common is TIME. We each get 24 hours a day. How long did it take you to make your $250GP screen printing money and how long did it take you to make your $325GP embroidery money? What was your HOURLY income for each?


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

You make valid points. We are not at 100% capacity so time is not an issue as I point our here. But I will answer your question. 

We did 50 shirts with dye-sub with a pre-treatment. It took about 2-3 hours to fill the order, soup-to-nuts. The 16 shirts were done as a left breast with about 5K stitches and took around the same amount of total time. Now, if we are talking hundreds of garments then I see your point. 

But wait, there is more. Thread has a longer lifespan that ink. Embroidery machines take up less space than screen printing equipment. Embroidery is less of a skilled job than screen printing, lowering labor costs. Embroidery has a higher perceived value than printed garments and is typically done on more expensive garments increasing the profit-per-each while lowering shipping costs and space allocation to store the blanks and finished product. 

And, just to round out the conversation, we go to a lot of private conventions where vendors buy space to sell products related to the groups having the convention. You can buy shirts, bags, hats, other clothing, and lots of other promo type items. Want a custom printed shirt? FORGETABOUTIT! Want a custom embroidered shirt? No problem! Those machines run from the time the convention opens until it closes, all at retail pricing. No one brings a screen printer or even a DTG printer to these events. 

So, given my position, and I would suspect a lot of those here, embroidery is a money maker from day one, which is my point.


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## vctradingcubao (Nov 15, 2006)

binki said:


> So, given my position, and I would suspect a lot of those here, embroidery is a money maker from day one, which is my point.


+1 on that Binki. My conclusion is that on a retail, no-minimum set-up, embroidery is really quite profitable. I think that there's a sort-of a shifting of the market now, (or maybe a new market) for the embroidery industry. In our country, the big embroiderers are having a hard time filling up their capacity while those with single head machines are having difficulty filling up the large demands on small jobs. Plus, if you show the customer that you're only using a single head, they can understand if you charge more. Now, imagine if you have a 2, 4 or 6 head machine at another location,(besides your store front), you can finish a lot of jobs while charging for a (higher) single head price.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

Retail settings for a working single head are awsum. I saw one running in a clothing store in Catalina. They charged $32 for the shirt with 12K stitches and the price went up from there. There were at least 3 shops doing embroidery. One shop had a nice boat being sewn onto a jacket back for a custom order. Probably $50-$80 for the embroidery plus the retail on the jacket. 

The only downside with a retail or on-demand setup is keeping inventory that your customers will buy. We sometimes have a shirt or two left over from another job but we don't keep inventory. Another thing that keeps our costs down and profits up.


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## vctradingcubao (Nov 15, 2006)

binki said:


> Retail settings for a working single head are awsum.


I agree with you a 100%. I just did'nt like the title you gave this thread because the "secret will be out". Don't forget that The law of "supply and demand" still holds true.


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## Screenanator (Feb 14, 2007)

When we brought all of our embroidery in house(we were contracting out 42k a year just in stitching)we were very nervous if could pull it off...hooping and prep work is huge!!!! The screenprinting portion of our business...blows the embroidey AWAY! The biggest jump we noticed was the single head in the retail storefront of our main shop....sports teams would come in....place a uniform order then ask...could we send the players over to get their names on the hats if they paid for them themselves....sure...I get 10 bucks to do a back name on a cap...takes 3-5 minutes...BAM...we are now flooded will personalization....but the ole press beats the SWF hands down in our area.We just did 950 shirts for this event. American Nostalgia Racing Association Inc. ..took less than a day...full back single color...6 color front and 2 color sleeve....profit 15.00 each...including artwork.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

Wow, making $15/ea wholesale is pretty good for screen printing on that many pieces. Those must be the $35 t-shirts you see at concerts and such. Funny thing, I am in Bakersfield right now and that event is here this weekend (today). 

We are not at full capacity so we don't worry about time. "A dollar is a dollar on the bottom line" is our motto right now. We want the customers and the orders so we take all profitable orders, even if the profit is small. The cost to acquire customers is many times more than keeping them. The best part is referrals. Our customers act as sales people for us and we don't even have to pay them a commission! Well, actually, we give discounts to our customers if they refer business. If they give us enough referral business we will even give them a payment/credit for a referral.


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## Dee0707 (Nov 7, 2021)

ftembroidery said:


> We do both embroidery & screen printing as well. You need to consider something when determining the profitability of one over the other.
> 
> Now, you may be thinking, ok....he's going to talk about the cost of the embroidery machines vs. the cost of a press, or maybe the cost of the digitizing software compared to the graphics program a screen printer will use. No, I'm not. Anyone in the industry knows it's far more expensive to set up an embroidery business from scratch than it is a textile screen printing business from scratch.
> 
> ...


It doesn't matter if it takes an efficient embroidery machine a longer time to do the job than print on demand. More scope for multi-tasking and packing orders as the machine does the job. May actually be an advantage. If you get more than one machine over time, that will also help. It sounds better for labour TIME which is the main cost.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

rickmiller said:


> Thanks for this information! Very interesting.


Thanks. I first posted this in 2007 and we are still running. EMB has about a 90% margin on patches and about 60% on garments. If the garments are supplied we do about 99% margin becuase we charge the profit on the garment as well as the EMB. It is a small shop and i can set and run the machine while I am doing other things. We currently run a full sized 4 head and full sized single. They could run 24/7 if I could stay awake that long. Right now they run about 12 hours a day each. Still printing money with these things.


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## TickyTacky (Nov 16, 2021)

binki said:


> Thanks. I first posted this in 2007 and we are still running. EMB has about a 90% margin on patches and about 60% on garments. If the garments are supplied we do about 99% margin becuase we charge the profit on the garment as well as the EMB. It is a small shop and i can set and run the machine while I am doing other things. We currently run a full sized 4 head and full sized single. They could run 24/7 if I could stay awake that long. Right now they run about 12 hours a day each. Still printing money with these things.


Have you ever had troubles with your client base? And if yes: how to go through it?


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

The biggest problem with clients is either supplied garments or getting paid.


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## FranciscoJose (May 4, 2016)

binki said:


> The biggest problem with clients is either supplied garments or getting paid.





binki said:


> The biggest problem with clients is either supplied garments or getting paid.


What machines do youuse for emboridery?
and why your batch is the Upland logo?


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## selzler (Apr 4, 2007)

I have a embroidery gift shop in a mall. We now have 4 single head embroidery machines we let our customer to bring in new clothing they have bought from other stores. To do this I’ve raised our embroidery charges names left chest $10. Designs up to 10k stitch count is $10. I stock around 1,000 caps because no other store handles blank caps. We do have a sports memorabilia store in the mall and they send customer over that want names add. Most of the gifts we sell are locally made in the state.our embroidery area did over 200k this year.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

selzler said:


> I have a embroidery gift shop in a mall. We now have 4 single head embroidery machines we let our customer to bring in new clothing they have bought from other stores. To do this I’ve raised our embroidery charges names left chest $10. Designs up to 10k stitch count is $10. I stock around 1,000 caps because no other store handles blank caps. We do have a sports memorabilia store in the mall and they send customer over that want names add. Most of the gifts we sell are locally made in the state.our embroidery area did over 200k this year.


Good deal! That is really great.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

FranciscoJose said:


> What machines do youuse for emboridery?
> and why your batch is the Upland logo?


We have SWF, a 4 head and a single head. They were 25% less expensive than Tajima and still good quality. 
That logo is a trademarked item we make and sell.


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## FranciscoJose (May 4, 2016)

binki said:


> We have SWF, a 4 head and a single head. They were 25% less expensive than Tajima and still good quality.
> That logo is a trademarked item we make and sell.


Than you
I am considering a brother pr1055x or a second hand tajima single head. Any advice?

I skated upland that’s whyI asked


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

FranciscoJose said:


> Than you
> I am considering a brother pr1055x or a second hand tajima single head. Any advice?
> 
> I skated upland that’s whyI asked


Yes, the Pipeline is no longer there but there are a lot of people in their 50's and 60's today that did. 

My advice on a single head is it will get you into the game but it is hard to make money with them. You will need at least a 4 head at some point and given that save your profits from the single head to purchase a 4 head. 

The Tajima may be ok if it is in good working condition. If it is a full size machine even better. The Brother you mentioned is a home machine and is limited in the sewing field size. You didn't mention any details about the Tajima but I would say if it is in good order to buy that one rather than the Brother.


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## FranciscoJose (May 4, 2016)

Thank for the advise. 
abd yes I am in my late 50s


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## FranciscoJose (May 4, 2016)

selzler said:


> I have a embroidery gift shop in a mall. We now have 4 single head embroidery machines we let our customer to bring in new clothing they have bought from other stores. To do this I’ve raised our embroidery charges names left chest $10. Designs up to 10k stitch count is $10. I stock around 1,000 caps because no other store handles blank caps. We do have a sports memorabilia store in the mall and they send customer over that want names add. Most of the gifts we sell are locally made in the state.our embroidery area did over 200k this year.


What Machines do you have?


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## selzler (Apr 4, 2007)

FranciscoJose said:


> What Machines do you have?


I have 3 melco and 1 SWF which I have for sale and want to add 2 more melco it’s a lot easier to train new employees on the melco


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