Sharing my digitizer comparison

Elle) Elle’s digitizing looked very nice. She had some of the sharpest lines and fullest fill. The lettering presented some issues though. Again, “Vector Pipeline” would require manual cleanup after it came off our machines. Further, the smaller text appeared to pose a problem. The same “P” in “Springville” gave Elle trouble as gave A trouble. Personally, she was my second choice among the six. The price for the digitizing was quoted at $16.06

B) B was a VERY expensive American digitizer. While you can see from the quality of their digitizing job on the triangle why they are still in business, you can see from the lettering that there is a limit to what a skillful digitizer can physically do. The lettering doesn’t really look any better than anyone else’s. “Springville Compressor Station” doesn’t look that great, and manual cleanup would be necessary on “Vector Pipeline”. We didn’t feel the extra cost was justified for the marginal (if any) superiority in quality. The price for the job was quoted at around $35

C) C looked very nice too. They did among the best jobs on the “Vector Pipeline” and “TM” lettering. It’s nice and bold and readable, with minimal manual cleanup required. “Springville Compressor Station” looks among the best as well, although it’s still a bit fuzzy. For the number of stitches, the fill on the triangles seems a bit sparse still. C also had the best per-stitch rate of $1.00/1,000 stitches. While they used at least 10% more stitches (and 70% more than the least number of stitches used), they still came in the cheapest, at $9.15 for the digitizing. I am surprised they didn’t want their name to be known, as they did a very nice job at a very nice price.

I then sent the following e-mail to the digitizers, except B who was judged to be too expensive to pursue further:

“We are still working on our decision. I had some more questions regarding your embroidery digitizing.
1) What are acceptable forms of payment? Our accounts payable person very much dislikes Paypal.
2) What do you charge for revisions? (for example [I described required changes here].)
3)What upsize/downsize fees are there?
4) Minimum/maximum fees?
5) Rush fees?
6)Any other fees or information we should be aware of?”

All the digitizers responded promptly within 24 hours, so I commend them all for their responsiveness to customers. In particular, A, Steve, Vlead, and Elle were especially prompt and thorough in their responses. Vlead sent us an entire informational packet and a personal e-mail from the owner. From the e-mails and the digitizer’s websites, I obtained the information available in the spreadsheet linked here:

Standard Turnaround: All the digitizers had satisfactory turn around, within 24 hours. Of special note is Steve, who got our digitizing job back to us in 3 hours. Vlead and Elle also got our jobs back to us faster than the remaining 3.

Billing: As a good sized screenprinting/embroidery company, its important for us to have simple billing. Ideally, we wanted monthly invoicing rather than weekly or per-job. This means only 1 Paypal payment to keep track of for our accounts payable. Also, it would mean that we can see the work before we paid, which was not the case with our previous digitizer who demanded paypal microtransactions for each job and didn’t let us get the .dst for a sewout until we paid. In this respect, we were inclined towards Vlead, Steve and Elle, who offer periodic Paypal payments.

Revision Charges: Vlead, Steve, and C all quoted minor revisions as free. Elle quoted them as “mostly free” which I think really means “free” but was hedged against major changes a customer could try to characterize as minor revisions. A responded that all revisions would be quoted individually. Obviously, we favor the digitizers who provide free revision.

Upsize Charges: Steve was the only digitizer to offer free upsizing of previously done digitizing. A again said upsizing would have to be quoted. Vlead was $5 and Elle was “mostly free.” Upsize charge for C “varies.” While free is preferable, we feel a small fee for upsizes is acceptable since it will often require re-digitizing as the larger embroidery will require more stitches.

Downsize Charge: Downsize charges were identical to the upsize charges, except that C stated explicity that downsizing would be free.

Minimum Fee: Minimum fees were a non-issue as all digitizers’ (except our old digitizer) minimums were so low as to be immaterial.

Maximum Fee: A and Vlead had no maximum fee. Steve had a flat rate, so max/min doesn’t come into play. Elle had no maximum but said a discount would be offered for jobs over $75. C had a $80 minimum fee, but at $1/1,000 stitches, it’d be a heck of a digitizing job to reach $80.

Rush Charge: A had no rush charge, but simply required to be informed when the digitizing was needed. Vlead offered 4 hour turnaround for a $5 fee on ball caps and $9.50 for left chest. Elle and Steve offered 12 hour turnaround free so long as we let them know in advance we needed it rushed. C offered 12 hour turnaround for a $3 charge.

Communication: I should mention that while all the digitizers could communicate in English, Marcus and Elle were especially well-spoken and easy to communicate with.

Why did we choose Vlead?
In a word, Customer Service. Vlead compares favorably to the other digitizers in all the tangibles. They are not the cheapest (beware the absolute cheapest) but they are affordable. However, price is not our greatest concern. As sole proprietorship screenprinting/embroidery businesses go, we are a fairly decent size with 4 retail outlets and lots of sports leagues, high schools and universities that we do business with. It is more important to deliver satisfactory and timely work than to shave a few dollars off the bottom line. We therefore require a long term, cooperative relationship with our digitizer that ensures good communication and timely, satisfactory results for our customers.

We were very impressed with Marcus’ (Vlead’s owner, whom we dealt with directly) efforts to demonstrate his willingness and ability to form a long term business relationship. He went to great lengths to show us his business has the infrastructure and stability to become a productive long term partner. We received photos by e-mail of his staff, IT assets and offices in India, which was further assurance of his abilities to deliver what we need. We were just plain impressed with Marcus’ motivation--he clearly has a passion for his business and recognizes (as we do) that superior customer service is vital for success. We were not convinced that some of the other digitizers would share our outlook the way Marcus does, or that all the digitizers had the size and professional-ness to handle our business.

We also liked that, while Vlead has a website, all our business dealings are carried out by e-mail. As one of our sales reps once told me, “I went to school for Rec Sports Mgmt, not IT” Our sales reps are not experts with computers and it’s not their jobs to be. They are not familiar with file management or webforms, and had trouble submitting digitizing jobs to, and retrieving their completed files from, the website of our previous digitizer. Also, e-mail allows better communication than filling in a few text boxes on a webform. Of all the digitizers, only Steve and Vlead offered to do business solely by e-mail.

Now that we’re customers: We have been using Vlead since August now and have had time to discover how our dealings as a client will be. We are very satisfied. Upon choosing Marcus, we were presented an information sheet to fill out, requesting details on our standard preferences for digitizing jobs.

As you can see from the 6 sewouts, the same image and instructions can be interpreted many ways. Our standard preferences are therefore kept on file at Vlead, in order to minimize edits and better serve our requirements.

Marcus calls his customers once-monthly to make sure Vlead is meeting their expectations, and to address any issues, requests, etc. that customers may have. We have made several requests, such as changes to the information presented on invoices, inquiries about billing, etc. Marcus has always responded to us promptly, and made accomodations to satisfy our requests. Our salespeople RAVE about Vlead for their digitizing quality, price, responsiveness and ease of communication. Overall, we feel the price we pay is outstanding for the level of personal attention and service that we receive.

In summary: For a good-sized organization, I would highly recommend Vlead. I would also feel comfortable dealing with Elle although I don’t see how she could surpass the job Vlead has done.

For a smaller organization or a one-off digitizing job, I would feel comfortable with Vlead, Elle, C or Steve.

I had questions whether Steve could acommodate our volume, given that he appears to be a one-man operation doing a fair bit of work already for members of this forum. I had questions about C's longevity and web-based interface for communication and job submission. The price and quality are good for both however.

Contact info for the non-anonymous digitizers:

Elle: http://www.momols.com and s a l e s @ momols.com

Steve: g n i z i t i g i d@gmail.com (remove the spaces in the username, I typed it this way so Steve doesn't get his e-mail picked up and spammed by bots)

Vlead: http://www.vleadservices.com/ and m a r c u s @ vleadservices.com

I hope everyone finds this info useful, please feel free to comment with your own opinions.

Gerald
St. John Sports