I used to work for medium-sized embroidery company as an embroidery operator up until last year when the company relocated in the city which was too far for me to continue working for the pay I was getting. They sold one of their single-head to me so they can get multi-heads and keep just one single-head for doing embroidered samples and so on. Anyways, their spoilage rate as company policy is 5%. This involves shirts that ruined because of poor embroidery quality, good quality embroidery but with wrong thread color(s) and stuff like that.
So now that I’ve started a home business with my single head and just received my first order of 5 dozen t-shirts. What is your spoilage rate; is 5% normal and do you guys add your spoilage percentage to the total quantity of the order? And, what do you guys do with the spoiled stuff? I never got to ask my former employer what they did with those rejects.
Hello,
I have no idea if there is an industry standard for spoilage rate when it comes to embroidery, but for my shop it’s 3% and even 2%. These percentage are based on large orders. For small to medium orders, a most of the times there are no spoilage. For large orders, I do add the spoilage rate to the total. If the design is complicated, I add 3% and if it’s simple then 2%. If my distributor has a lot in stock of the particular goods I’m ordering then I don’t add the spoilage rate for small to medium orders unless the design is very complicated.
The spoiled goods are cut and used for doing samples and the extra blanks goes into inventory for future orders. For my good customers, sometimes I embroider the extra blanks and include them in the order as bonus–they like that a lot …lol.
Hi. My spoilage rate is around 3% and the spoiled stuff are used for samples. Sometimes they’re also donated to the Salvation Army if the stuff looks good, but not good enough for the customer. I add the rate to my total order as well.
For shirts mine is around the same at 2-3%, but for headwear, especially caps, it’s a bit higher at 4-5% and sometime even 6% for very hard logos. I always add the spoilage percentage to my order because if not, the goods might be no longer stock which happened to me on several occasions especially on popular items (of course I didn’t know that at the time).
