Cap Embroidery.

Earl Smith

I am in Germany and I was asked by a friend in the US to embroider 20 caps with a logo of around 3,000 stitches. I gave her a price but I was massivly under cut by an embroiderer in the US. Their price , cap, embroidery,tax and digitising included for under 4$ each.
Is that a general price for cap embroidery in the US? If it is then someone please contact me with their prices and I will get them to do my work for me.
Earl

fwscreener

It depends, is the customer supply the cap? If they are then that is a little low. If we supply the cap then we make a liitle off selling the cap and we charge have to charge around $1.00 per 1000 stitches. We use to get alot more, however since obama our economy is all screwed up. Many people here just trying to cover costs and keep our doors open.

Earl Smith

As It says in the post, the price is for cap, embroidery, digitising and tax. Everything. Looks like someone has their business model calculations a little out. On your costs the cap would be around 1,50$ sell on at 3$, embroidery 3$ , digitising free, and tax ?? So a minimum of 6$ plus tax? A little better but still not earning enough to run a business.

Eric

It depends on three things. Volume, volume, and volume ... lol

First off, yes, that is on the cheap side for a QTY of 20, but not unheard of, I could easily do a 3k logo for under $4. I wouldn't be super happy about it, but its definitely do-able.

For example:
Lets say the customer uses a larger embroidery house, they want just a regular ol' 6 panel brushed twill black cap. The embroidery house knows that it will never get stuck with 6-panel black caps, so they order 10,000 of them direct from the manufacturer and get a great price probably in the neighborhood of 50-75 cents. They now have huge room for playing with their markup. So lets say they triple the price of 75 cents (I usually try to 3x markup, where I can) to $2.25 then charge $0.50 per K for embroidery so that makes the whole cap $3.75.

With tripling the price of the cap, it leaves you with the power to give the customer the cap for half price and still make some money, although not advised for lower volumes. You get the idea. lol

My digitizing fee's vary, if the customer is able to supply me with a vector format ready to import into Wilcom and go, I charge $9.95. If there is tracing and other artowrk involved I charge $24.95. For large and intricate designs like jacket backs I charge by the hour for digitizing, but these don't happen very often.

Also, large houses have large machines, they can run hundreds, some even thoudands of pieces per hour. They buy thread/bobbins by the pallet, making consumables cheaper too. Its a viscious economy of scale scenario. lol

I know I got a little carried away with my response, but hopefully I answered your question.

Eric

PS - There is no tax in the US on business to business purchases if the business both have a resale tax license. In my state of Massachusetts there is no tax on clothing to anyone (at least not yet, lol)

Earl Smith

Thanks for your thoughts. I agree, its possible to do a cap with a 3K design for under $4, even if you buy the cap in from a supplier. But why do it? Lower your prices and the competion will lower theirs as well and the prices keep going down and down.
Price wars are usually started by the embroidery shop who was doing bad business before the crisis and then brings on the crisis for all others around him. Usually out of desperation and lack of imagination on their part. First thing they do is lower their prices, when they should go out and look for customers, improve their quality of service and so on.
Sorry, going on but what I have just said is usually true. People will come to me , ask the price and then tell me that another embroiderer is cheaper, usually only by a few cents. My reply is usually to tell them go to my competion. They are 20 miles away, slow and unreliable. Ok, I might loose the job but half the time the customer will be back realising that the extra fuel costs to get there ( $7 a gallon here) and that I will do it quicker will more than compensate for my slightly higher price.

Now lets talk about OB.........OK, lets not. :-) We on the outside of the States see him differently as you on the inside.

fwscreener

Hi,

Sorry I missed that about supplying the cap also. We would not do 20 caps for that price and supply the cap. As you said let them go. And as the other viewer said volume, if they need 400 plus, yes we can probably work something out.

So how do you all see OB?? I am not one of these that is trying to start arguments but I do love to talk politics.

3Deep

I will say this you must have been under a rock for the last 8 years if you think the economy just when in the tank since Obama got in office, but you have your opinion and I respect that. If everything was so great the pass 8 Obama would not have had a snowball in hells chance of getting in office. Sometimes disliking a person makes one not want to see any good that person does even if he bought you a car you would ***** about the color or the wheels anything to cast a bad light. Only other thing I can say is vote him out in 2 and get someone to take us back to those great 8 if thats what you think they where.

Darryl

fwscreener

You are so CORRECT, the economy did not start tanking when Obama took office. It actually started with the Community Reinvestment Act, passed by Clinton. Bush in my opinion did many things wrong, his spending was way out of line. However, we do not need this socialism being passed by OB. What we need to do in my opinion and I fault many Presidents for this is secure our borders.

Eric

Ahhhh ... Politics .

There are 3 things I try to never discuss, S**, Religion, and Politics. No matter what you do/say there is always a critic, and usually ends up in a fight.