Embroidery Digitizing - Educating the Customer

A few months ago, a promotional sales customer of mine (We’ll call her Sally) sent over a design to digitize for her customer for an event they were having. If you’re in the industry, you know the minute they say the word “event”, you have a rock solid deadline.

Artwork was sent over and discussed and digitizing began since we had limited time.  The design involved a main event logo and two sponsor logos and pricing had been quoted for such.

We had less than a week to complete the digitizing, get approval, send the stitch file to the embroiderer and complete the production. The problem was, Sally’s customer kept changing the design; major graphic changes. Every time the design was completed, it was sent for approval and came back with new art and changes. Sometimes there would be two or three in a day. On the third day there was another issue with one of the sponsors and they had been replaced so we had to add another design into the fray. Each time a change was made, the stitch count would go up (of course) and consequently the price of not only the digitizing but the production estimate the embroiderer had given them….and the clock was ticking!

Now, we were happy to make the changes but the customer was unhappy that editing fees were incurred and the embroiderer no longer wanted to stick with the quote they had given them for production…..understandable.  Sally just said, “Hey, that’s what they said they wanted.” But she never took the time in the beginning to explain the process and that changing the original art causes delays and editing fees. She didn’t even ask if this was the final art before starting the digitizing. Sally’s customer just figured they’d pay for whatever final design they ended up with and they expected the embroiderer to stick with the quote they were given regardless of the changes and final stitch count.

Had Sally explained the process to her customer better, we could have avoided the confusion, had no surprises and actually been more efficient getting her customer what they wanted. Things worked out in the end, we comped some edits and Sally paid for some also. We also worked to get the stitch count down on the design as much as possible so the production wasn’t too high and working with the embroiderer, we hit their event date. The customer was thrilled with their shirts.  All was successful.

It’s our job as professionals to make the customer happy and we do it every day.  But communication is essential to making things go smoothly.  Spend some time educating your customer about the process so they’re not surprised by the costs of their embroidery. If they’re still in the planning stages, explain to them that making major graphic changes to the design after digitizing only makes their costs go up. Changes they are making to the art need to happen at the graphic stage before digitizing.

After all, if you educate your customer, their order goes smoother, they understand what to expect and they’ll likely return because you made it work!

Of course, sometimes these things happen and can’t be helped. This is why a relationship with a good digitizing firm makes all the difference. Someone who is readily available to you and can roll with the changes so you can still meet your deadline.  NeedleUp Digitizing is that company.

It should also be noted that like most good digitizers, NeedleUp includes small edits and changes in the design process. Things like trims, color breaks, small text & coding changes and adjustments for sew-ability are all part of getting the customer a design they will love.

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

Things your Digitizer needs to know...

I get it.....what you may say? ....

You're in a hurry, under a deadline. You have sourcing to do to find
some chartreuse shirts that your customer wants along with some crazy
6-panel matching hats and you have to find, order, embroider and drop
ship for an event. The design needs to be digitized and approved before you can even start so you're sending it on to the digitizer so they can get started.....sound familiar? So just slap the design onto an email and send it.

So I get it....it's easier to just shoot the design over and let the digitizer figure it out, right?

Well, it may be easier at the point of *send* but if you're guilty of this, you're causing yourself problems on the backend which delay the process and can result in less than quality designs.

I know, I've been the recipient of many emails from customers that read, in their entirety: "Here's another design". I have to literally refrain from sending a reply that reads, "That's pretty!" (tongue in cheek).

Seriously, we cannot do our job properly unless we have all the information. It's not because we're nosy; there are reasons for every question we ask. At the very least, provide the basics: what color(s) will be used to sew the garments, what are the garments, fabric, and sizes needed. If the item is something like a sports bag, we'll need an embroiderable area size, not how wide the pocket is but hoop size and how much space we have once the hoop is in place to embroider.

And lastly, the art itself. Are the white areas in the background going to be filled with thread or open to the fabric? Are the colors on the art the same colors to be used for the embroidery?

If you don't know the answer to these questions, get with your customer first. Get into the habit of asking customers specific questions because they are inexperienced and have no idea what they need to tell you. If your customer is asking for their design to sew in royal and they just ordered royal shirts, you need to deal with it before you involve your digitizer.

Providing as much information as possible makes the process much smoother and all parties can be on the same page. In the end, your stitch file will get to you much faster and be digitized optimally for the job you're doing resulting in a far superior design application.

Embroidery Digitizing - "Fixing" Designs

With the economy still “tender” and the industry trying to regroup this year, I’ve been getting more of what I call “fixer” designs. Stitch designs that came from somewhere else that have a production problem of some sort, and the customer wants me to fix the design so it’s usable because they don’t want to have the design redone. That’s when I get the call and they say “I can’t show this to my customer!”. Of course, they don’t have the wireframe master copy of the logo; only the stitch file and usually about half of the design has to be re-digitized anyway.

Then there are the customers that only send me the “more complicated stuff” that their cheap digitizer can’t seem to get right or know how to do at all. Sometimes they’ll have a very important client or account that they cannot afford to lose due to a low quality design job. They save money on the easy stuff with the cheap digitizer but when it’s more detailed or too difficult for them, or more important to get it right and fast, they come to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the business, but I always wonder if the customer really feels it was worth it to go through the whole process twice, only to end up paying just as much or more; plus doubling their turn time. Had they used a reputable digitizer the first time they would have been able to meet their deadline and cross the finish line with a quality design.

I know you want to be your customer’s hero, their embroidery guru. I can’t stress enough the importance of building a rapport with a professional digitizer…personally… not ordering a design from a faceless company on a website.

Besides the inconsistency problem of never having the same person work on your designs, you can’t speak to the person directly for instructions, or changes to the design. If there’s a problem or need to call, you’ll likely get a message taker who’ll tell somebody to tell somebody. In the case of overseas companies, you can’t even do this because it is night-time there during your business day and they speak little, if any, English.

Spend a bit of time searching out a digitizer that’s a good fit with you and your business. Once you start a relationship with that person, I promise you, there will be many little benefits along the way you never got from the others. A little loyalty goes a long way also. Let them know where you’re coming from and work with them to create great embroidery for your clients. After all, quality is what brings your customers back to you!

Embroidery Digitizing - The Digitizing Side of the Embroidery Fence (Part II of II)

For all you Embroiderers out there:

With all that being said from the last post (Part I)...a look on the embroiderers side as to whether its better to use an outside digitizing company, hire an on-staff digitizer or learn the process yourself.

The truth that no salesperson when you bought the digitizing software will tell you, but that you very quickly find, is that the learning curve to get up to digitizing at a commercial (professional)level of quality is HUGE. And, worse, there's no place to learn the art, save for a few books and online classes. And make no mistake, it is an ART and some people, if they're honest, just aren't cut out for this art.

On the positive side of this, if you have the time to dedicate, the artistic ability to apply and the where-with-all to stick to it, you can master the digitizing side of your embroidery business. But do you want to?

Maybe not, "Do you want to?" BUT "Is it a wise use of your time with regard to running your business"? As you know, you're not making money if the machines aren't running. As an embroidery business owner you will wear many hats and juggle many balls. Do you have the time to wear the digitizing hat also or would your time be more effective doing production, marketing, customer service or management and leaving the digitizing to the pros?

You could hire and/or train a staff member to digitize but be sure you have enough work to warrant and sustain this person full-time, year around. A good digitizer commands a decent salary. It's not cost efficient if you don't have enough digitizing to do. If your training, realize that it will be awhile til they're up to speed.

That leaves us back again to using a reliable digitizing company that will be there when you need them and allows you to talk directly to your digitizer. You don't have to provide health benefits or vacation pay. You pay them only for the work that is done and you get the very best digitizing from an experienced professional to provide your customers with the best quality possible.

Do your homework, figure out what's best for your company! If you need great digitizing now, call NeedleUp Digitizing, 303-287-6633

You didn't think I'd pass up that opportunity, did you?

Embroidery Digitizing - Charge! - Part II

Why does digitizing cost as much as it does?

Many people out there think that digitizing for commercial embroidery is a scanned process where art is loaded, a few buttons are pushed and out pops (magically) a fully usable and perfectly running design.

The honest truth is, the process is far more complicated than that. This is the reason that any commercial digitizer worth their weight in gold, charges more than the advertisements you see all the time for designs for $15. Yes, the industry is closing in on some auto-digitizing software options but they don't work for designs more complicated than very basic line art and not at all for text; and let's face it, how many custom company logos do you see that fit that mold.

In the embroidery market as a whole today, you can buy "digitizing" software for anything from $500 to $10,000. Quite a few home embroidery softwares call themselves digitizing software because the waters have gotten muddy and the term "digitizing" has become a broad term, meaning that they are able to upload a picture and punch some stitches over it. The differences between the $500 stuff and the commercial top of the line softwares costing $8,000 - $10,000 is definitely night and day! You're not just paying for more option or buttons with the high end; you're paying for the programming and stitch processing capabilities of the software....and you're paying for the ability to alter and/or edit every possible aspect of the stitches, in any manner, to create a stitch file that is controllable in every way and capable of sewing commercially, professional quality. Therefore, someone with $1,000 software isn't capable of turning out stitch files with commercial results.

Now that's just the technical side of embroidery digitizing; let's talk about the digitizer themselves. You should be concerned with experience above all because if you want your designs to reflect "professional" to your customers, your going to need someone who knows what they're doing, has been doing it for quite awhile and understands not only production of embroidery but the very technical side of the art of digitizing. ...And make no mistake, it IS an ART. Those that digitize professionally and are very successful, have years upon years of experience and have an inherent creativity that brings something special to their work. These people charge more for their expertise, NeedleUp is included in this group. Now, you've heard me say this before but it bears repeating. When purchasing software or just the service of digitizing; YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR! If you still don't get this, you've either been miss-informed or are very lucky. (And don't even start me on the topic of over-seas digitizing companies...another time perhaps)

Anyone with money can buy expensive digitizing software....in the same way that anyone can buy scissors; That doesn't necessarily make them a hairdresser now does it?