Embroidery Business
Are running your embroidery machine as a business or a hobby? We managed to turn our hobby into a business, sacked the boss and now spend time at home, sewing for fun AND profit. In this section, we'll give you a few pointers and tips on how you can embroider for a profit and some resources that will save you lots of time and effort finding suppliers and customers.
Here are our top 5 tips, see the menu on the right for more:
1) You can sew for profit on a home embroidery machine!
We started with a small, single colour Janome embroidery machine. It's easy to use and gives great results. You don't have to upgrade to a multi colour machine or even a multi head machine to make a profit. There is no point spending £1000's if you are not sure that you are going to a large enough profit to cover the payments.
2) Find a very small niche and do it better than anyone else.
This is going to sound crazy. We have a relationship with a large commercial embroidery outfit. They are set up to make tens or even hundreds at a time. We're happy to pass enquiries we can't handle (or don't really want to do) to them. It's no fun sewing the same design onto 150 t-shirts. Dull, dull, dull. Remember, we sew for FUN and profit!
We told them how much we were making per item, they nearly fell off their chair! We make almost TEN TIMES what they make per item. Because we have found a small niche, we are not competing with them (or anyone else really!) and yet they tell us that the embroidery business is so cutthoat, they only just break even on some of the larger jobs.
We don't do company logos, we create designs, personalise them to the buyer and then sell them at a price that reflects the effort we have put into them. Can you think of any niches you can fill? Here's one for you to ponder on: Horse racing - you can find horse embroidery designs available to download for a couple of dollars. Why not make a few items with the horse on and put the Derby winner underneath? Everyone who placed a bet and won a sackful may like to buy one of those! Do you have an airport nearby? Pilots are crazy about planes. Embroider one onto a shirt with the call-sign or airport underneath - how can they resist?