How Do You Figure Pricing For Your Embroidery?

January 12th, 2012 Tags: Embroidery pricing, how to figure embroidery prices, How To Price Embroidery
Posted in Embroidery Pricing

How do I figure pricing for my embroidery is a question that is on every new embroiderers mind and a question that seems to have a lot of different answers depending on which expert you talk to in the embroidery industry.

I teach from my experience, my own 20+ years of having my own multi-head embroidery business and then another 12 years that I have been training and helping other embroidery professionals start and grow their embroidery businesses.

You may have heard my story of how I almost lost my business because of underpricing.  I did what most embroiderers do; I gathered everyone else’ s price lists and averaged them out to create my own price list! Sometimes I would give the customer the lowest price around just to get the business and this was a huge mistake!  So many embroiderers start out doing exactly the same thing that I did and that is a practice that must stop!

It Is Time To Stop Undercharging For Your Embroidery!

I would love to start a movement for embroiderers to stop working for nothing and start pricing their work for a price that is worthy of them.  We are highly skilled professionals, not unskilled laborers, but so many embroiderers charge like they are unskilled laborers!  This is not fair to the embroiderers that are trying to make a living and it is really causing many of them to second guess what they are doing! This is very disheartening!

There are many embroiderers that are working from home and they are just getting started.  They think that their time is worth nothing and to get the work they must practically give it away.  When you are first learning your craft, I can understand this way of thinking but it really must stop. Most embroiderers do not offer their products until they feel confident that they are ready and that their quality is good.  You did not get into this business to kill time, you go into this business because you wanted to earn an income doing something that you love to do!

It is time to stand up and start charging what you should charge like the professional that you are so that you can actually make a living from your business or at least give you a good supplemental income.

There Is More To Pricing Embroidery Than Stitch Count!

When you are trying to come up with a good price list you must consider several factors and it is not all by stitch count.  There is so much more that goes into figuring your pricing other than stitch count and that is what the majority of embroiderers are charging for.  When your embroidery machine is not running, you are not making any money, how can stitch count be your only factor?  It isn’t.  You have color changes, stops and starts, the time it takes to put the garment into the machine and take it out along with other factors.

Who is paying to hoop it, who is paying to trim it, who pays for the packaging of the finished product?  Most of the time it is the embroiderer and not the customer that chokes on all of those charges.  This is not the way that it is supposed to be!  You are performing a service and each piece of that service needs to be figured into your pricing structure.

You need to know exactly how much each one of these pieces are costing you and the only way that you can accurately know that is to start timing each one of your steps.  Each function that you perform in your business has a time and cost attached to it; start timing each one of these functions and figure out how much it is costing you. I have always been an advocate for timing everything that I do.  Time is money and you cannot get it back when you give it away. Your time is precious.  Use it wisely and start charging for your time.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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