The Path Best Taken

Pathing is one of the most important elements to master in the process of digitizing. Quite simply, pathing means the order in which the design sews; what sews first and what sews second plus the progression of the design from first stitch to last. Efficient pathing is a design with the fewest trims possible and minimal color breaks. An optimal one color design would have only one trim which is at the end. This would mean that everything was planned or pathed so that all parts of the design were sewn without stopping. To do this, all stitches traveling between elements of the design are covered by the later parts of the stitching. The best way to start digitizing a logo, is to plan out the design in your head before you begin.

Along with pathing, color breaks go hand in hand. Generally, the design will need to be digitized from the background to the foreground so that elements of the design on top fall in front of parts that should be behind. The idea is to only visit each color of the design once if you can. (Some designs may require you to revisit colors later in the logo). A 3 color design that has 52 trims is a very poorly pathed design. Each trim is another possible thread break or pull out and slows the machine down. As an old boss of mine used to say, “We aren’t making money if the machine’s not running .”

The efficiency of an embroidery design is most apparent at the machine. If you are an embroiderer, it will be the first thing you notice and the first thing that will make you crazy if it’s not right. If the machine keeps stopping throughout an order making the job take longer, you may need to charge more for production. A poor design can make the job take 2 to 3 times longer.

If you’re a promotional products salesperson, the first thing that you’ll notice is how much hair your embroiderer is losing. This is where a quality digitizer breaks out front of the “cheap” pack. It’s great to pay only $25.00 for digitizing until your embroiderer has to charge you for editing and longer production times. Your embroiderer may even refuse to sew a design that’s really bad. If your embroiderer cringes every time you walk in the door, you may be using the wrong digitizer.

NeedleUp Digitizing is the “right digitizer”. We have the experience and knowledge to create consistently great designs that are beautiful and efficient at the machine making your run times minimal!

*****NeedleUp Digitizing is owned by Donna Lehmann. You can contact Donna by email: donna@needleup.com or call us at 303-287-6633 M-F. Visit our website for pictures of some of our recent work: www.needleup.com *****

Embroidery Digitizing - Customers - Changing Their Minds (Like changing their underwear)

We’ve all been there: Customer calls multiple times, either changing their order, adding to it or just altering the design or placement.  You can’t seem to get to “Final Answer” but they still want their job by the original deadline. Only that’s getting closer and closer….or worse, you’ve already started the job.  Now what?

You must draw the line in the sand. Small hurdle or huge ordeal?  Take a minute to access the situation.  Is this latest change something you can reasonably do?  Can you keep them happy and still meet your deadline?  Will you need to charge more for this addition? Of course, you want to keep the customer and you should absolutely do anything that you can to make them happy in the name of customer service, right?  Right!  ...... sort of.


Resist the urge to tell them that anything can be done for a price. While true at times remember that you cannot buy more time, so it’s up to you whether you’d like to place your sleeping bag in front of the machine or pay for overtime to get the job finished. Then there’s the fees that may be required for the change including the possible editing of the design, more garments, more supplies (thread, backing toppings), rush fees, more shipping or pick up fees, etc.  In the case of design changes, you need to go through the approval process again so there are no surprises or issues on what the customer expects.  Failing to get the new version of the design pre-approved before production can bite you in the butt, even if it’s just for a slightly different size or color. All these things eat up time, time you don’t really have if you are to meet the deadline.

Specifically, with regard to the digitizing, as always, get as much information as possible about what the customer now wants, what’s been changed and get an idea of how much time it will take to edit the design and if there are fees involved.  If the change is size related, have an idea of what size they now want.  Telling the digitizer, “I don’t know, just smaller” doesn’t help either of you to be timely. Be specific and you can get back on track to the deadline faster.

Finally, be up front with your customer and let them know as soon as possible if there will be any costs because of the changes they’re making.  Give them a choice so they are not surprised when the bill comes.  Be honest and realistic about what you can get done in the time you have and whether you can still meet the deadline. If you say you can, then you definitely need to!  Maybe your customer can take a partial order at deadline and receive the rest after;  let the customer decide.   That’s how you cross the finish line!



***For more information on NeedleUp’s digitizing services, visit our website at http://www.needleup.com or contact Donna Lehmann by email:  donna@needleup.com

Embroidery Digitizing - Hats - New Placements, Old Problems

Hats are a very popular item to embroider but a stinker on the production: Not all designs are created equal when the customer decides they want hats. For a little while now, I’ve seen more of a trend towards different placements that I want to address.

Most hat jobs are the usual front design with maybe a back design arced over the keyhole or straight for flex flit type styles. Customers are trying to come up with new spots to embroider that stray from this by embroidering a design on the side of the hat or placing a design on the front panel to one side within the two seams. I’ve even seen a “bug” style logo squished down into the bottom right side of the left side panel. Limitations include the kind of hat frame used for the job but for the most part, you have approx. 3” of sewing space between seams (on a six-panel baseball type cap) and around 2” tall for height on the front two panels and 1.5” height on side panels.  These are very small areas and not every design will be able to shrink to those dimensions. 

You’ll need a simpler design with minimal or no text to fit those spots effectively.  Font style and size are very important, not too fancy and not too small.  Even ¼” text, which is normally considered minimum for flats, is too small for hats without a fill of some kind for support underneath it. Of course, there’s a gray area depending on the brand and fabric of the hats as usual.

While I understand the appeal of doing an alternate placement to make the hat different than the mainstream, you must understand the limitations of embroidery and your customer’s logo and be able to explain it to them and come up with an option that works for both of you.

Know your hat frame and sewing fields/available area so that you have that information for the digitizer.  That way, the design can be created at the correct size and without secondary editing and resizing to get it to fit.  Educate your customer to be flexible and realistic about what will fit the area to be embroidered.  Know that the same issues with registration on hats still exist and be mindful that you are sewing up and away from the center seam whether you will be crossing the seam or not.  This means that the design is not interchangeable should the customer change their mind and decide to sew it center front after all. 

If you talk to your customer and spend a moment to describe the issues and get to final answer before the digitizing, you may avoid costly edits and restarts to get to the finished order.  Hats are one of the most challenging garments that we embroider on but spend the time to understand the issues at hand and what your hat frame is capable of doing and you’ll be on your way to more hat jobs with happy clients!

**For more information on NeedleUp’s digitizing services, visit our website at http://www.needleup.com or contact Donna Lehmann by email:  donna@needleup.com

Is Embroidery Digitizing part of Colorado’s new moral dilemma?

Recently, Colorado passed some laws legalizing medical and recreational marijuana and we’re still figuring out, as a state, what it all means to local trade and living. Whether you are “for it” or “against it”, it affects everyone in some way or another and as a business owner, I’ve had to make some decisions myself.

Dispensaries in the metro area have popped up all over and, as businesses themselves, they are looking to market their shops and goods. This means that I’m getting calls asking whether I will do business with them to digitize their logos and help them find embroiderers.

You see, some embroidery companies refuse to do embroidery for or do business with, anyone selling marijuana, running dispensaries and/or paraphernalia shops, much like some of the banks and loans in town. Since they didn’t vote for the law and don’t agree with it, they turn those potential customers away even if it means losing a job. This is, of course, their prerogative… it IS their business.

For me, I’ve made my decision. (Just so you know, I’ve never smoked pot and I certainly didn’t vote for this law.) My business is embroidery, nothing more, nothing less. 95% of my jobs are corporate logos and I’ve very good at what I do. This issue has nothing to do with my feelings about the marijuana industry. I sell embroidery designs to customers that own businesses….period.

I’ve done designs for churches I wasn’t affiliated with, restaurants I haven’t (or wouldn’t) eat at, and political logos for people running for different offices on both sides. To me, refusing to digitize a customer’s logo because it’s for a pot dispensary is as stupid as refusing to digitize a logo for a bar because people shouldn’t drink. After all, they are both legal. For my business, that’s where the line is. You have to make the decision for yourself.

As far as embroidery, will you turn down a biker group because you don’t like them? A bar with a logo of a half naked woman? How about a meat packing plant because you’re a vegetarian?

It’s not my job to pass moral judgment. I do embroidery. That’s my job.

What do you think about this issue? Have you turned down jobs because of your beliefs?

Embroidery Digitizing - The Learning Curve

Think back.  You’re at the embroidery show or in the sales office looking at purchasing your first embroidery machine and software.  You’ve done your homework on the internet checking different software capabilities and machine options.  The sales person is telling you how profitable and easy the embroidery business is and you’re nervous because this is a lot of money and you don’t know much about the industry. Even if you have some experience with the embroidery (in one way or another) you have no idea how to digitize a design.  Sales people will tell you that you can learn as you go, but in the meantime, the easy stuff can be auto-digitized in the software and if you come across something more difficult, there are many places you can send the design out to and get it digitized.

Any of this sounding familiar? Yea, I thought so.  I’ve been there. Not as the sales person or the customer but standing behind you at the show/in the showroom listening to what the sales people are telling potential customers. They don’t want to tell you anything overwhelming and scare you away so they say that it’s a simple thing of taking the art, running it through the software to create a stitch file, loading it into the machine, hooping the garment and selecting the thread colors. Then hit a few buttons and you’re literally “in business”!   I realize they are just doing their job but I’m going to tell you the truth.

The learning curve for running a successful embroidery business is substantial. The learning curve for understanding the process of purchasing quality digitizing is big. The learning curve for mastering digitizing yourself is huge! This is why most embroidery companies purchase their digitizing or hire a digitizer on staff. You have to be pretty big to have an on staff, full time digitizer, so today I’m just going to talk about purchasing your designs.

 Yes, there is a learning curve to purchasing your custom embroidery designs:  Your objective is to get the best quality at the most cost effective price in order to maximize your profit margin. Does that mean, just getting the digitizing as cheap as possible?  The short answer is “NO”.

Whatever your reason for getting into the embroidery business is, you must provide your customers with consistent service and quality they will come back for or, quite simply, they won’t come back, and you won’t have a profit margin to worry about.

Remember, you’re going to pass the digitizing cost along to your customer so this is not a production cost to you. However, if you’re simply buying your digitizing based on the lowest price, you’ll find there ARE hidden costs to you associated with this practice that will compromise your quality and service to your customers. Those include:

1.       Delivery time problems - when you have to have the design either redone or reedited multiple times to get it right pushing your job finish time back

2.       More fees later - Paying another digitizer to fix the design so it’s usable or companies that a-la-carte you to death on edits and second version sizes.

3.       Poor production times – the machine doesn’t sew the jobs efficiently due to poor pathing, unneeded color breaks and trims on the digitizing, driving up production time so much that it actually costs you money to do the job (see also #1)

4.       Customer satisfaction – No matter the machine, if the digitizing isn’t quality, you can’t turn out quality designs you’re proud to put your company’s name on. If you can’t get the job to them when promised, they will lose faith in your abilities. You’re trying to build and retain customers; do you really want to take chances with crummy, slow results?

5.       Poor communication with the digitizer – If you cannot talk to a live person about your design (or communicate with them because of a language barrier or time difference) it’s a waste of your time. I’ve been doing this a very long time, and when the design elements require adjusting for “sew-ability” or your customer requests changes to a design (and this happens all the time), you need to be able to discuss this with the person doing the punching. You can’t do that with a website.

6.       Inconsistent quality – Low/Cut rate digitizing companies have many digitizers on staff. It’s a draw which one will be given your design to work on each time and you can’t speak to them directly so one time the design may be OK and the next horrible. They may be using auto-digitizing softwares that don’t work well, inexperienced digitizers and many times they don’t even sew out the designs they’re creating before sending them on to you. (Caveat: Just because a company says they’ve been in business, digitizing for 20 yrs, does NOT mean that the actual person doing your work has been digitizing for that long).  You DO get what you pay for!
 

I cannot stress enough how important it is to build a relationship with a reputable digitizer who you can talk to directly. One that you can trust to give you reasonable pricing, consistent quality from years of experience, and someone who understands production, pathing and the need to sew out every design for quality before sending it to you.  You need a digitizer who offers personal attention and makes you look good with every job you do for your customers.
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NeedleUp Digitizing is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at www.NeedleUp.com, donna@needleup.com or  303-287-6633 for DIGITIZING, consultation and classes M-F.

Embroidery Digitizing - Let’s Talk Lettering – Part II

In Part I of Let’s Talk Lettering, we talked about keyboard lettering, when we use it and some of its limitations. In part II we’re discussing how we charge and talking about text with your customers.

Charging for Lettering Jobs:

Many shops charge per name when doing a list of personalizations such as right chest names or even name drops into stock designs or under company logos.  Some may even charge per letter. The major softwares have a “team name” function built in to make the long lists of names and the application of doing these one at a time, go smoother and faster. This is when you’ll use your keyboard text most.

However you decide to charge for your services, take into consideration the time it takes to hoop each shirt individually for the names in addition to the application of any design on the opposite side, since this is a separate hooping.  Even if you’re using the “team name” function under a logo, you will have to stop the machine once the design is finished to load the individual names. If you have a long list of names, it can be time consuming so make sure you’re charging for your time.

If I am adding lettering or a tagline to a customer’s existing logo, usually I will just charge an edit fee, even if I’m digitizing the letters manually. If I can use keyboard lettering and it matches what the customer is asking for, I will use that and “clean” up the letters, adjusting them for fabric pull and usually tweaking the corners and joints.  Once you get into more than just a tagline or the whole logo is basically lettering or a design or icon is included, then I’m charging for a full logo by stitch count and almost always digitizing the lettering by hand.

As you get better at digitizing your lettering, you’ll find you use the keyboard text less because it’s easier and more time efficient to digitize the letters correctly from the start rather than edit keyboard text more.

For the customer’s benefit:

Convenience and organization dictates that you have a printed list of sample text in the fonts you offer customers in your shop.  Be familiar with your regular fonts and insure that they are the ones that sew well in every day practice.  There will be many fonts in your software and not all of them will be winners. Also be aware that the more fonts you offer, the longer it will take the customer to make a decision, so handing them a 3” thick binder of fonts, may not be what you want to do.  Displaying a list including 4-5 scripts, 4-5 blocks and 4-5 serifed font styles should be your basics. When a customer asks about other styles, you have a chance to talk to them and provide a more custom experience and more fonts to look at.

Be sure to also know approximately how many characters per inch you can sew in each font. The customer will appreciate your expertise and you’ll be able to quickly help them find a lettering style that will work for their job. An easy way to display your basic fonts is to sew them and frame them for the wall or counter. This way the customer can actually see the letters in thread.

For full logos, the lettering is usually a part of a customer’s company design and the lettering should look exactly like their logo. They’re paying for a custom job so if the keyboard font doesn’t look exactly like their art, and many times it won’t, don’t use it.

I get jobs sometimes that have very tiny lettering under them for a tagline (way under minimum standard) and the customer wants me to recreate the design at the same size. They’ll tell me they want the same lettering but make it look better. This is when educating the customer comes into play. You have to discuss the design with the customer and tell them why the lettering looks bad on their original. If the text is too small to sew well on their fabric, give them options like enlarging and stacking or moving the text to a better location.

Lettering is probably one of the biggest challenges to master that embroiderers’ face. There’s no match for practice and experience. Keep notes of what works, sizes and settings. It’s never a waste of time. Almost all company logos have lettering, unless you’re the owner of the “swish” or “the little man playing polo on a horse”. J

 

NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, donna@needleup.com or  303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F

Embroidery Digitizing - Let's Talk Lettering - Part I

Let’s talk lettering – Part I

Every embroidery software, from the simplest home software to the most expensive commercial software, has a lettering function of some kind.  In the past, the quality of the keyboard embroidered letters has varied amongst these as has the functionality of the softwares to manipulate and edit them. These days, the user friendliness has gotten much better even in the lower cost softwares and the differences from brand to brand are blurring more and more.

But I don’t want to talk about specific brands of embroidery software or their keyboard fonts. I mention this to say that there is a time and a place for using keyboard lettering and a time when custom lettering should be used.   A good digitizer knows which is called for on each job.

Since I am a custom digitizer working in the commercial industry, I use the keyboard lettering maybe $30% to 40% of the time. The rest of the time, my lettering is custom digitized by hand, specifically for the customer’s logo. Even when using keyboard lettering, the individual letters still needed to be edited for the fabric and for pull compensation. Never do I use keyboard lettering straight “out of the can” and my software creates great lettering, however, no keyboard font can automatically adjust for every fabric or design situation.  

If you’re new to digitizing, you may tend to crutch on the font lettering but avoid doing this too much.  Watch designs with lettering that sews well to see how the letters join and corner for a better understanding of how lettering should look and path. What you learn you will apply to your hand digitized lettering.

As for keyboard lettering itself, familiarize yourself with what your lettering can do and recommended sizes for each font, understanding that some lettering styles do better at smaller sizes than others. If you are extensively editing the keyboard font you’re using, you are better off digitizing the letters by hand. There’s a “gray area” once you get down to ¼” letters and below.  There are some fonts that will do fine at a slightly smaller size (Usually these are block type fonts with no serifs) but fabric strongly comes into play at that point as to whether they will sew cleanly. There’s no way to insure the design will do well as the customer sews the design on multiple fabrics, but staying above the ¼” standard font size for basic lettering will help. With wildly different fabrics, like fleece and terry, you will need an alternate version of your design to accommodate those incorporating more underlay and density.

Certain fabrics or designs will allow block lettering as small as .16” tall to sew fairly descent, especially nylons and twill.  Fabrics such as knits and some piques are rather unforgiving even with ¼” lettering and will “sawtooth” much more. Generally, the smaller the letters, the lower the density but you have to hit the “sweet spot”. Dense enough for coverage and smooth edges but not so much as to cause crowded spacing, knots and bunching at the joints and bulging of the letters themselves. This is the reason that it’s preferable to know the fabric the design is intended for right up front.

I want to take a moment here to mention True Type font conversions. Keyboard embroidered lettering created from TT fonts on your software.  A few of these do, just, OK.  Most suck. None of them compare to digitizing lettering by hand. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I just don’t go there, nuf said.

Understanding the dynamics of embroidered lettering, densities, underlays, column widths and pull compensation and how each of these relate to different fabric biases and types will take you farther down the road than just always using keyboard fonts.

In Part II, we’ll cover the customer side and charging for your time with lettering.

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NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, donna@needleup.com or  303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.