Please find some links and notes from the 2 Regular Guys Podcast. This week we welcome back into the show, the jet setting Erich Campbell of DecoNetwork. He has been traveling the country talking to businesses using the DecoNetwork Platform and we are going to ask him about embroidery by the numbers. We will use his extensive experience with embroidery and his new role with DecoNetwork to give us an in-depth look at costing and pricing your embroidery decorations.

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Embroidery by the Numbers with Erich Campbell

Give us the overview of embroidery costs and pricing.

Embroidery is not a monolith: Different shop models

Cost and Pricing are two very different things

Costs: what it takes to keep the doors open and produce a garment

Price: what we can reasonably expect a customer to pay

Can’t price on cost alone; we have to talk about value, and it can’t just be a discussion about material costs; market fit, demand, marketing, niches; much more goes into the price you charge that is more subjective than the cost of production.

Models: Base garment + markup + cost of embroidery; Garment + markup + flat rate; Price matrix: One one axis you have cost per thousand stitches, with the cost decreasing with stitch count increase, on the other you have garment costs, decreasing at quantity breaks - generally with a base price; hooping a garment and putting it on a machine always takes a certain amount of time. Base of 6-8k stitches at a flat initial rate, then +per K.

Markup isn’t the only way; huge contract shops price on decoration only, but that’s not how an average small shop works - PW survey - the models I talked about are common, but not the only methods; the key is knowing what things cost and your capabilities.

Talk to us about the impact of embroidery production time as it impacts your costs.

Time is everything. Materials costs are actually quite negligible; at the most expensive rates, a quality thread at retail rates is roughly .06 cents per thousand estimating 4mm stitches. At that rate, even a 10k stitch logo has only 6 cents of thread in it, add about 7 tenths of a cent for bobbin thread, pre-cut stabilizer, averages maybe 10-15 cents for a pre-cut left-chest sheet. If I go for specialty stabilizer, maybe 20 odd cents. If I add a water-soluble topping, maybe add another 3 cents there, all high estimates. The likelihood is the materials cost me 25 to 30 cents per garment o...