Thinking of Starting an Embroidery Business

jwconnelly

I could use some expertise. My wife and I are thinking of starting our own embroidery business. The machine we tend to be leading to is the Melco Amaya. Is a one head sufficient or should I start right with a two head? Does anyone have any ideas on this type of machine either Pro or Con?

Also we both work full time, myself on a swing shift, so we don't need to make a profit the first year or two, but would like to at least be able to make the lease payments as our company grows.

I would prefer to target the outdoors market such as sporting hunting and fishing clubs.

Any help would be appreciated.

Marc

Welcome to the forums

It's great that you already have a niche in mind. And because your interests include fishing as stated in your profile, you already know your customer base and probably have some initial contacts for your first few orders. So you're off to a good start. Oftentimes, people start an embroidery business not knowing their target market; sadly it becomes an expensive learning experience.
A single head is fine for a startup embroidery business. When your business grows, you can add another machine--a multihead--to meet and exceed production requirements. Thereafter, your single head can be dedicated for producing embroidered samples and small orders.

As for the pros and cons of an Amaya embroidery machine, I really can't comment on that as my experience with it is limited to demos at embroidery trade shows and opinions of some people in the industry. However, one thing that impressed me about Amaya was its unique feature of having the ability to network with other Amaya embroidery machines. This feature of being modular is certainly a plus.

I'm sure somebody reading this post will comment on their experience with Amaya. I also found this Amaya Users site that you can browse/search for users' experiences.

When buying an embroidery machine, people often overlook one crucial aspect in their decision-making process--reliable technical support. Whether it's the embroidery operator's fault or the machine, a busy business cannot afford to have their machine down or not functioning properly. If that machine is not stitching when it's supposed to, you’re simply losing money. You will find that embroidery machines tend to have issues when you need them the most! Reliable technical support is key.

Here is another post about buying a commercial embroidery machine.

Embroidery digitizing is another issue for startup embroidery businesses. To digitize, or not to digitize: that is the question. You may be very excited starting your own business and it's natural to want to do everything yourself. You may get an offer to "save" money on a top-level digitizing software when purchasing a new machine if both are purchased together as a package/bundle. But are you really saving money?

If you’re new to embroidery, you will not be digitizing like the pros in a couple days, weeks, or months. I know plenty of people who bought top-level digitizing software that never used them; not because they were not capable of learning digitizing, but because they lacked the necessary embroidery experience. You have to be good at embroidery first before you really become a good digitizer, but this is another topic altogether.

Get a low-level digitizing software instead as a package with your machine that allows you to view, organize, convert, edit, and do lettering that can also be upgraded to top-level with full digitizing capabilities in the future if and when you do decide on digitizing designs yourself.

Outsource your digitizing needs in the beginning and spend your time marketing your business and focus on getting customers. Once you know how to produce quality embroidery, only then consider learning digitizing. However, you may find that your business would be better off if you continue outsourcing digitizing. Meaning, you may be more productive outside marketing and selling as supposed to spending hours in front of the computer digitizing. It all depends on the person and situation. Contracting digitizing also allows you to tap into that digitizer's resources and know-how which is a fantastic bonus especially to those just starting out.

jwconnelly

Thanks Marc! you gave me some good tips, especialy the part about digitizing!, you were right I thought if I purchased top notch programs it would be a slam dunk. Thanks for bringing me back to earth. As far as the business end goes I already have several orders for jackets with only a very few given out at a great discount to get my product out in the market where people can see it. I also made my first sale inquiry at a local sport shop and they seem very interested. It looks like we are on our way. The next step is to purchase or lease a machine.

david150

Amaya is a superb machine! As for buying two versus one head, since Amaya's are networkable and since you are just starting, an incremental approach is the better approach (basic finance 101). You can always ad a second head quickly so why incur the capital cost when your current business volume does not justify the expense at the moment?

reggie

As someone who is new to embroidery, I would NOT recommend doing your own digitizing. I ended up wasting much of my time trying to do so and getting very frustrated in the process.

edmontondigitizingchick

The company I work for purchased a Melco Amaya about 9 months ago. Personally this is not my favorite machine. I have experience on a number of machines....1 Head Tajima, 1 head Melco, 1 head Melco Amaya, 4 head SWF, 4 head Tajima, 12 head Tajima Flat table, 12 head tajima capable of hats at 270 degrees and garments, and a 18 head tajima. All of these machines have been varied ages one even as old as 18 years and I would still prefer to work on it rather than the 9 month old Amaya.

I have had thoughts of opening my own embroidery business and if I do go ahead, my purchase would definately be a Tajima based on experience of workmanship and the service that they are able to provide. The Melco Amaya is good for somethings, such as speed, it is capable of embroidering up to 1400 stitches per minute on satin stitches and 1100 on fill/tatami. I sincerely believe that quality is greatly sacrificed at these speeds, I have found that I am able to run it at 1000 SPM with reasonalbe results.

I do not find it to be a very versatile machine. I have had many issues with embroidering hats, the quality is just too poor, that we have actually started telling customers that the machine does not even embroider hats. Leather is another huge issue, constant thread breaks. I can take the exact same leather garment and exact same digitized design to the old Melco machine in our shop and obtain superior quality, and have almost no thread breaks.

It sounds great that it is modular and that you would be able to add another head to it. Through my experience, as long as you were planning to run the same design on multiple heads this would be a benefit, but if you are always going to be embroidering single items and changing designs this really isn't practical as the operator will spend alot of time inputting all the information and won't have any time to prepare the garments. I have heard that SWF has something similar to the modular system where heads can be added, although I have not checked this out. The SWF machine that I worked on was quite good, I have only had experience with 1 though. Although I will caution that service in Canada is very hard to come by and quite expensive as there was only 1 technician in the time I worked for the company with that machine. I have heard that this is good selling machine in the US and has good support there.

Overall make sure to do your research and get information about different brands of machines. Make sure to find out where you can get support and where the technicians are located, if you have to pay driving time and hotels it can get costly.

Also I agree with the comments that others have made, digitizing requires lots of experience and many small companies would be better to purchase their digitizing from an experienced digitizer.

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EdmontonDigitizingChick

megrisoft

As for digitizing, i will advice to use digitizer because doing own digitizing waste time if you are not good in digitizing and one more reason is that a professional digitizer can make design with top quality in less stitch count which reduces the prices involved in the Expenditure

howesew

My wife and I are in the same boat as you. We both work and run our small embroidery business at home.

I would HIGHLY recommend an Amaya/Melco machine. What little tech support we needed was handled easily. The company is superb to deal with and the one week training was top notch.

The Design Shop Pro software that the system uses is really user friendly and powerful at the same time.

At least half of our business comes from hats and it does a quality job.

The machine is very forgiving of our limited experience too.

Adding additional machines is a slam-dunk.

andy4u

I completely agree with all people. I have tried Amaya but not completely satisfied with its performance, I am proud of using Tajima & Barudan machines for my embroidery business, I have wasted much time in first year to learn digitizing but still was unable to digitize quality designs & it took my lot of valuable time. I am outsourcing all my Digitizing work to GliderDigitizing.com for over 3 years now, they have performed fantastic designs for my company and helped me to become a leading company in this embroidery business.
Cheers to all!

dubiat

Another way to go would be a Toyota 9100. These are very good machines and are also networkable. So you could hook up another machine and have both running at the same time for the same design or two different designs at the same time.