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Cataloging Embroidery Designs For Clients

What do you guys do for cataloging embroidery designs to show your clients? I do personalized gifts so basically I have lots of designs that customers choose and have name drops and/or messages embroidered with it. Right now I have embroidered samples to show them. Like I have receiving blankets with a design and the name of the baby over the design. I know customers want lots of selection when they come over at my place, but I can’t afford to have hundreds of designs embroidered on garments. There must be an easier way. I know I’m not the only one in the personalized gifts niche. Anybody care to share how they go about cataloging? Thank you very much!


I also to personalized gifts. I have two methods that I use.

1 - After embroidering a nice design for a client. I scan the embroidered design in good resolution. I then use Paint Shop Pro to crop and resize the images. I use one to the many free cataloging/shopping cart scripts available on the net and create a very simple website. This works great for people to browse and search by keywords the many designs I have who can not be at my shop, and they can browse any time 24 hours a day seven days a week without taking any of my time. My current customers loves this also because they can just phone and tell me what they want without visiting me back and forth. People who drop by can also just browse of course. I have dedicated an old PC Internet access for people coming by for browsing. It’s very convenient for everybody involved. Being a little old lady, I can’t even begin to tell you step-by-step how to setup web space. All you have to do is get in touch with a college student web designer and have him/her set you up. It cost me a one time fee of $400 and this includes my domain name and training for operating the site. Then I pay a small monthly fee for reliable website hosting. The training is pretty straight forward, nothing complicated. If there is a problem with the site, I can just call my web guy for him to fix the issue for a very small fee. That’s why it’s important to get a local web designer. I’ve never had a problem to this day.

Or to save money you don’t have to have a website. Just have the designer install the script for local use only so there is no web hosting fee, domain fee, or any other possible associated fees with online stuff. People need to be present at your place though to browse.

2 - This is pretty straight forward. Whenever I do embroidered samples and the design is beautifully done, I trim the backing properly so it looks nice. I create an album out the designs to show clients. You don’t have to embroider ALL of your designs if you’ve got hundreds and hundreds - just the nice ones across all categories so that people get the idea of you quality designs and fonts. The rest of the designs can viewed via 3D embroidery file rendering on a computer or paper (printed in color).

Unlike method 1, method 2 does not have the convenience aspect. The best scenario would be to have both methods so that people can have an idea of what you offer and they can feel/confirm the quality when they visit your place.

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