Prices - Flat or Per Thousand

Robert Young · May 2nd, 2016, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlisonB

Robert I am just "small potatoes" here. A lot of the digitizing I get asked to do is for the mommy at home with a single needle machine and no software.
I send a picture of my stitchout of their design, and they can let me know if something looks wrong. I have had to educate some about the use of stabilizers though!

Two things here to discuss... mommy at home.. to me that is the future! the large shops have mostly gone.. so you are in the right place at the right time to me. second... you actually do a sewout ? to me I have found I can do an amazing sewout... but if my client cannot what is the point? I still have to edit for THEIR ability.. their machine, their thread, their needles, etc. years ago we stopped doing sewouts because our clients were not interested in investing the time and resources to provide the same quality to their clients... GOOD ENOUGH became the unspoken norm.

Robert Young · May 2nd, 2016, 11:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnizitigid

If i will charge more, the client will go to other person doing in less price....

I don't agree... if you charge more you will attract a different type of client. Would you rather have 10 clients at 10.00 each or 2 clients at 100.00 each? you can lose 80 percent of your clients and make TWICE the money of your 10. do the math.. it does not have to be this dramatic... but the concept is the same. I know , I live it.

digidana · May 3rd, 2016, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Young

I don't agree... if you charge more you will attract a different type of client. Would you rather have 10 clients at 10.00 each or 2 clients at 100.00 each? you can lose 80 percent of your clients and make TWICE the money of your 10. do the math.. it does not have to be this dramatic... but the concept is the same. I know , I live it.

AMEN! to me, whether its fact or not...when i get an email that says designs are $10, my first thought is "dang, they must suck!"

there are so many cheap digitizers out there, they've really cheapened the art in the last 10 years. charge what you're worth. if you're subcontracting out to india and they do your designs for $10, sure, charge $12 per design. or if your designs really aren't great, you're using pirated software, and auto-digitizing, sure $10 works. i do everything from scratch, give every design thought, and give every design as much character as possible. a design that may take some 10 minutes to do, may take me twice as long, but my time and 20 years (next month!) of expertise is worth more than that.

digidana · May 3rd, 2016, 04:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Young

mommy at home.. to me that is the future! the large shops have mostly gone.. so you are in the right place at the right time to me. second... you actually do a sewout ? to me I have found I can do an amazing sewout... but if my client cannot what is the point? I still have to edit for THEIR ability.. their machine, their thread, their needles, etc.

i've seen a huge increase in at-home embroiderers too. most of the time its fine, but sometimes i'll get somebody that is brand new and can't get the design to stitch right. i ask them to text a pic to my email and 9 times out of 10 their tensions are way off and they haven't figured out how to adjust them yet.

i haven't done a sewout in years either. i probably did sewouts the first 10 years or so of every design i did just so i could make sure I was happy with it, but once you learn what works and what doesn't it isn't necessary. if i have a really tough one i want to see stitched, i have many customers that are now friends and will do a sewout for me. i remember probably 15 years ago, bonnie at moonlight told me she didn't do sewouts anymore and i thought that was crazy!

lrsbranding · May 19th, 2016, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Young

Two things here to discuss... mommy at home.. to me that is the future! the large shops have mostly gone.. so you are in the right place at the right time to me. second... you actually do a sewout ? to me I have found I can do an amazing sewout... but if my client cannot what is the point? I still have to edit for THEIR ability.. their machine, their thread, their needles, etc. years ago we stopped doing sewouts because our clients were not interested in investing the time and resources to provide the same quality to their clients... GOOD ENOUGH became the unspoken norm.

I understand why a digitizer wouldn't do a sewout on every job just for the reasons Robert listed. Our Barudan sews different than the Tajima, and there can be a difference between the heads on the same machine. On some designs I have a Barudan file and a Tajima file. Not to mention most of the time our po's consist of a mix of fabrics so we're walking the fine line between good enough or break up the order and edit the file to the fabric.
I must admit though, when I hear a digitizer say "We don't do sewouts anymore" are they using all the variables mentioned above to achieve their own GOOD ENOUGH? If a digitizer isn't running their own designs how do they know they are producing the best quality? Basing it off the number of edit requests only shows what the production market accepts. I run Wilcom which is touted as the best software. Since I haven't used any others I can't confirm or deny that. But I do know that it seems my version of Wilcom has it's good days and bad days. There are times some of the functions don't work right, and it seems that the "stitch processor" doesn't do a good job. Just like every program, restarting the computer seems to help. I also think some of the windows updates screw with things. I don't know. All I do know is sometimes the design will sew perfectly and the next day I can't get the simplest of anything to sew with crisp edges and even stitches.
Good enough is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Robert Young · May 20th, 2016, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrsbranding

I must admit though, when I hear a digitizer say "We don't do sewouts anymore" are they using all the variables mentioned above to achieve their own GOOD ENOUGH? If a digitizer isn't running their own designs how do they know they are producing the best quality?.

I think a digitizer to be good HAS to know how to sew designs.... while we do not actually sew out our everyday digitizing files we still continue to sew other things.. look at all the framed art in my gallery.. so we understand the differences in operator ability and machine par. To me that is important. And many of those are way more complicated than anything you will see on a typical hat or left chest application!

If I were an embroidery shop/distributor looking for a new digitizing source... and quality was IMPORTANT to me.. not just "good enough to receive payment" then I would ask the prospective new digitizer to do at least 2 designs for me... I would pay them of course but I would also pay for them to send me the sewouts physically. I would pick 2 designs that we have had problems with or that our client just did not like. I would not expect free as it benefits ME more than anyone so why not pay? *I will argue this point if anyone wants to

Ok, so if the sewouts are good/ great/ excellent.. (hopefully) but I personally cannot match that on my machines....Well now I know at least the digitizer knows what they are doing so the issue is on my end. I have just removed them as the "bad guy" now the only question is, will they work with me to help me achieve something similar on my end.

This takes away, from day one... is it the digitizer's fault or the embroiderer's fault? If you / your embroider cannot achieve it yet we can... well.

digidana · May 23rd, 2016, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrsbranding

when I hear a digitizer say "We don't do sewouts anymore" are they using all the variables mentioned above to achieve their own GOOD ENOUGH? If a digitizer isn't running their own designs how do they know they are producing the best quality? Basing it off the number of edit requests only shows what the production market accepts.

i know because i ran a sew out of every design i did for about 10 years (probably about 9,000 designs) and by the end of that 10-ish years, it kind of became a waste of time because they stitched out great on the first shot. "good enough" is never good enough! i aim for perfection, on the first try, every single design. i rarely have a customer come back for edits...and when they do its usually because they want an extra color change or resized a bit, etc. my designs have to be great, because i guarantee every one of them. if the customer isn't happy its 100% money back.

its true that not every machine or every head will stitch the design exactly the same, but i make the design the best it can be to try to compensate for that as much as possible. if a customer is having trouble with a design i ask them to send me a quick pic of it, and its usually an issue with tensions.

gnizitigid · May 23rd, 2016, 10:18 PM

To be true, i do not do sew outs as i do not have machine to do that. I worked as digitizer in company where i used to sew out designs and they were of great quality. Now when someone ask me for sew out, either i have to get it from outside and pay for it OR i have to refuse to the customer

Robert Young · June 28th, 2016, 06:54 PM

Kind of on the same idea as this thread.... knowing another thread has covered this but that was a while ago and maybe new thoughts will emerge? Whether your pricing is by the stitchcount or more critical by the thousand:

What is your thought on clients that STACK designs to get multiples out of one order?

For us is more evident with a 10,000 stitch ceiling... so you could stack multiple designs to achieve 10k.

what do you think about this?

It is all fun and games until only PART of the original file (meaning they separated them) comes back for an edit. Ha. I make the edit on the original and send the entire file back to them for them to separate. oops.

digidana · June 29th, 2016, 10:36 AM

i've never had that happen! i don't charge by stitch count tho...