5 Reasons Why You Should Start an Embroidery Business | Apparel Academy (Ep. 1)
hey guys welcome to the
embroidery
insider podcast I'm your host Henry Ma and in this episode we're going to talk about why youshould
start
anembroidery
business
so let me tell you guys what you can expect in this podcast you can expect expert strategies and advice from myself that we have given to embroiders over the years and you'll also see episodes where we'll invite guest speakers and experts in their relative fields withinembroidery
to come and give their insight andtheir advice to
you so you can learn from the community of embroiderers that are out there so
before we get
start
ed I just wanted to kind of set the tone for what we're gonna cover today in this episode we're we gonna talk about the fundamentals and the basics of why youshould
bestart
ing in anembroidery
business
this is something that people wonder a lot about okay isembroidery
business
the rightbusiness
for me and is this gonna be profitable so I want to kind of give you fivereasons
whyembroidery
is so popular and why people are getting into it and whether it might be the good fit for you and how youshould
think about getting into theembroidery
business
going forward so first and foremost if you look atbusiness
es out there there's always a cost associated withstart
ing abusiness
right and the upfront investment but withembroidery
actually it's quite inexpensive and quite affordable to getstart
ed and what I mean by that is the variable cost if you lookat other industries you might
have to you know rents rent a retail space you might have to get the get
expensive supplies to kick-
start
yourbusiness
but withembroidery
actually the supplies are very inexpensive we're talking about backing and thread and the essentials like bobbin to to make an embroider product and we've actually done the calculations and those numbers come out to be about you know 15 to 16 cents on average per item if you look at the relative percentage ofsomething
like that over the cost of the item that's a very very negligible chunk of
your variable cost compared to other industries where your your cost of goods
the input that you have to put in to make a product it's gonna be much much
higher sometimes you know thirty to forty percent of your overall revenue so
that's one reason why
embroidery
is so easy for people to getstart
ed in because the relative cost is very very minimal and speaking of retail space a lot of employersstart
out at their homes right in the garage and a lot ofbusiness
esstart
that way so you don't have to I don't want people to think that you have to invest in a retail space in order tostart
off in thisbusiness
your many successful embroiderersstart
ed out from their garage from their homes and have outgrown that and you can decide at the right time to move into a retail space if that is a right fit for you so that's point number one now that we talked about kind of the supplyside let's talk
about the demand right if you look around everywhere then this is reason
number two if you look around everywhere you will see embroidered goods and
embroidered products pretty much any where that you go whether that's to a
local restaurant to your local Starbucks where the staff has embroidered aprons
and caps to your local gym or any
business
es that need embroideredapparel
for their staff the the demand is everywhere and it's actually interesting that on one of ourFacebook Live episodes that we did a while back
someone asked this question of do you think the
embroidery
business
is saturated and I flat out told them no and the reason why is because the demand is so high and the margins are so high that it allows the room and the capacity for people to get into thisbusiness
because whether it's your localbusiness
your your friends and family is for an event for example there are always people needing embroidered goods and that's where the the voidis for skilled
embroiderers to be able to fill that void and fulfill that need and so if
you're skilled and you have a niche for example caps or you do something that
you're the other local embroiderers can't do then you can fulfill that niche
and there's more than enough space and and room in the industry
for different niches to to co-exist and therefore I'd really believe that the
demand for
embroidery
is always gonna be there because everybusiness
wants to show off theirlogo and and kind of dawn the the company swag and be able to
build that culture and that brand around the
business
and if you can position yourself to do well in that space you have more than enough room to go around and expand yourbusiness
in your local area now the third reason why anembroidery
business
is a goodbusiness
tostart
in is because there are so many good resources out there and platforms for you to get customers and get the word out there so ranging from free resources likeFacebook pages were and
social media where you can build a following and a lot of our customers
have done that just have an Instagram account or a Facebook page and kind of
post a work that you do that is self and word-of-mouth can travel and get you
business
in your in your local area in your local network and those satisfies customers who also refer other customers to you in the future that's a just a free easy way to getstart
ed but also other platforms like Etsy for example a lot ofembroidered and custom goods are made on there and is very easy
to get
start
ed very easy to post your customized goods on there for and and Etsy has a large enough platform that attracts a lot of users that are looking for embroidered goods on there whether it's embroidered jackets towels maybe even gifts for weddings and baby showers so that kind of platform also allows you to kind of getstart
ed without kind of wondering where yourbusiness
is gonna come from and we've also actuallycreated a
platform called Garmeo which is essentially a platform that links
business
es and and individuals that have a need forembroidery
to those who are able to fulfill that order sobusiness
es that haveembroidery
machines that are looking to fulfill orders can join a platform like Garmeo where orders are being routed to them kind of like an uber for theembroidery
space so that they can take the orders and kind of not worry about dealing with where the orders are going to come from more sofocusing on how to fulfill those orders
and do them well so those resources are are always out there and it's so easy to
get
start
ed without having to put in a lot of investment in a retail space or wondering how you're gonna do advertising to get yourbusiness
now the the fourth reason why theembroidery
business
so easy to getstart
ed in is because the cost of the equipment has gone down over all these years now if you look at maybe twenty years ago the cost of equipment forembroidery
machines are probably easily in the six figures you're talking about a single head machine or a two head to a four head machine being anywhere between you know sixty to a hundred thousand dollars so those costs have gone down over the years at as technology has evolved and has made it more more affordable and easier for people to acquire these equipment to getstart
ed in this in this industry you're talking about single head machines now ranging anywhere from you know eight toten thousand dollars on the on the kind of
start
er machine side and then maybe twelve to fifteen thousand dollars on the commercial side so those the the increase in technology and the development in technology has really helped makeembroidery
machines andembroidery
equipment more affordable for people to take advantage of and getstart
ed andstart
producing things right away without kind of a large hurdle or or a cost of entry into this industry and last but not least I mentioned a little bitabout the kind of platforms
where you can get
business
es but again customers andbusiness
but also the unmatched support that's in this industry a lot of other industries have a lot of competition where there isn't much of a community of people that are willing to help to help one another but I think what's special about the customerapparel
andembroidery
in particular is that people are willing to help each other and there are a ton of resources out there that are free and andvery easily
accessed by by anyone that are looking to learn and as long as you put in the
time and the effort to kind of learn those things you can definitely be
successful in your
business
es this isn't rocket science right and so some of the resources out there I mean with YouTube being a platform that has a lot of how to's we've actually also as a manufacturer developed a series of videos where we teach people how to do certain projects whether that's you know towels beaniescaps shirts patches those videos are you know free content that we
give to not only our customers but anyone looking to kind of learn about
embroidery
in general and give them the tools and tips on how to take a project fromstart
tostart
to finish there are there's are also groups on Facebook that are very very active we have a group calledembroidery
and customapparel
mastery where there's over 10,000 members in there ranging from people focusing onembroidery
to direct-to-garmentprinting to screen
printing and those people are very active and asking questions asking how
to price things how to where to get the best wholesale goods blanks and and so
that community of people is something that you don't really see in other
industries and so that level of resources is free to you to access if
you want to just learn about things right there's no commitment to actually
join the group you just join and if you want to lurk around and read about what
other people are
asking that's also a great way to educate yourself on this
industry and and along with the resources that we provide on the YouTube
channels with our
embroidery
hub episodes with with podcast like like like this where you get thesebusiness
advice and how choose on the on detect on the technique side in in video format that helps you prime yourself so that you when you are ready to make that leap and jump into theembroidery
business
you already have enough knowledge and really get a headstart
from everyone else and the continual support that you'll get in these groups and the communities of people that are very willing to help one another so we also have actually a private Facebook group for our eco maçussa MERS only where it's more focused on the on the technical techniques and details of our products so that we are also building a community of people that have our product and can get the support and resources that they need to be successful in theirbusiness
so allin all of the resources that are
out there for you to learn and to and to take advantage of but it's up to you to
really kind of capture that information learn it implement it and then really
execute it in your
business
to make a difference so I hope that helps those are the fivereasons
that kind of I've summarized into why youshould
start
anembroidery
business
and why it might be the good fit for you so to kind of recap first and foremost the the setup costs are very very low thevariable costs are
very low number two there are a bunch of resources and sorry there's a they're a
bunch of demand for
embroidery
in in everybusiness
in every localbusiness
or anybody that wants to brand their theirbusiness
there is a need forembroidery
so the demand is out there and it's continuing to grow as people want more and more personalized goods number three there are a lot of platforms out there to help you getbusiness
so that you don't have to be frustrated abouthow - like how do I get those orders coming in number for the
cost of machinery has gone down due to the increase in technology and last but
not least the unmatched industry support and the resources and the community of
people that are out there that has your success in mind so whether it's other
embroiderers ranging from other embroiderers to manufacturers like us
where we are providing you with the help and resources to make sure that you are
successful in your
business
so I hope thathelps in somewhere in the in the
description of this of this episode there are gonna be links to other
resources like the
embroidery
hub episodes that I mentioned about as well as to the Facebook group that I mentionedembroidery
and customapparel
mastery where you can join for free over 10,000 people in that group and then last but not least if you want more information on kind of whyembroidery
is the perfect sidebusiness
I encourage you to check out a blog post that our team has writtenregarding that topic if you want
to learn more alright guys so I hope that you found this episode helpful make
sure to rate this episode and to subscribe to our podcasts for more
insightful information like this I hope to see you guys next time