Save big money on Coats Prewound bobbins in white during The Embroidery's Store's January White sale.

Each month, the Embroidery Store offers some great deals on the supplies you need most on its Web site at www.embstore.com. It's a wonderful opportunity to stock up on things you use everyday at bargain prices. To order, call (800) 504-9757. These are available for the month of January only so don't delay.

White Medium-Firm Tearaway Backing
8" x 8" precut squares, 250 squares per package
Regular Price: $10.29 | Sale Price: $6.99
# B181888

Kingstar Thread
5,000-meter cones
Regular Price: $7.75 | Sale Price: $5.50

Poly-X40 Thread
5,000-meter cones
Regular Price: $4.99 | Sale Price: $2.99

Permacore Thread
6,000-yard cones
Regular Price: $7.75 | Sale Price: $4.99

Brilliant Cotton Thread
6,000-yard cones
Regular Price: $11.88 | Sale Price: $8.99
White: # A299996

White Cotton Thread
12,000-yard cones
Regular Price: $26.04 | Sale Price: $16.99
# A199996

Magna-Glide Bobbins
Style L, 130 yards/bobbin, white
(1 gross per box)
Regular Price: $35.40 | Sale Price: $26.99
# SM80022

Coats Prewound Bobbins
White Continuous Filament Polyester
Style L, 132 yards per bobbin (1 gross per box)
Regular Price: $48.07 | Sale Price: $37.00
# SM80029

Make sure your embroidered apparel looks its best when it leaves your shop. Steam out wrinkles and creases with the new G4 Steamer offered by The Embroidery Store.

G4 Professional Steamer Rids Garments Of Wrinkles Quickly

With the new G4 Professional steamer offered by The Embroidery Store, garments can be quickly rid of unsightly wrinkles and creases and prepared for final packaging and presentation to the client. This commercial-grade steamer made by Reliable, offers real-world features that make it ideal for steaming apparel on a production basis.

It will hold a gallon of water and features include an automatic shutoff, power indicator light, anti-spillage device, a heavy-duty PVC steam head, and a wrap-around body so the bottle will not fall off. Its industry standardized parts are interchangeable with other brands, and the 1300-watt brass element ensures long years of trouble-free use. The steamer comes with a removeable steam brush, easy-roll casters, and an anti-spill cap. It plugs into any 110-volt outlet and has a one-year warranty.

One of the secrets to a successful sales presentation is knowing your product. Don Allen, Alpine Graphic Apparel, spends time at trade shows learning about the various types of fabrics and styles so he can pass on the differences between one shirt and another to his customers.

It's impossible to bring every style a client may want to see and that's where catalogs come in. Bring one or more selected catalogs so if a client asks for something you didn't bring, you can show him pictures of what he may be looking for.

If you want to maximize your profit potential during a sales presentation, always bring samples in a range of prices. Depending on your client, you may start out showing a budget-priced shirt but always make them aware of upscale styles too.

Making the Most of Sales Appointments

Learn the secrets of successful face-to-face sales presentations.

By Deborah Sexton

Getting in the door at a potential client is tough - so much so, in fact, that you never want blow the opportunity once you're in there. That's why it's critical that you know what to say and show during your face-to-face sales presentations.

During the initial phone call you had with the potential client, you should've gathered information about his general needs, as well as his budget. Armed with that information, you can make better choices about the apparel you'll present.

Of course, you'll also need a thorough understanding of the apparel. For instance, if the client asks you the difference in construction in the $12 garment and the $25 garment, you'll need to be able to answer. "We go to trade shows, and touch and feel the garments to learn about them," says Don Allen, president, Alpine Graphic Apparel Inc., High Point, N.C. "We also talk with the sales reps on the trade show floor, and we read the industry magazines."

Besides the apparel, also be familiar with the catalogs you take on sales calls. "You don't want to fumble through the catalog looking for the right garment," Allen says. "And you don't want to slap a catalog on the table and say, 'What do you like?' You want to steer them toward things that you know are appropriate from a value and quality standpoint."

Depending on the client, you generally want to bring two or three types of garments at a couple of price points. "It's tough to decide how many styles to bring," Allen says. "Are you dealing with a national client or a small business on a tight budget?

"If the client is a pizza joint or a company whose employees spend their days crawling under houses, you're not going to put them in $50 shirts. I always bring a high-end garment or two. And I never bring cheap shirts."

Still, you should avoid bombarding the client with too many garment choices at numerous price points. After all, you're the expert, and he's relying on you to pick appropriate styles. "I recently met with a company that needed polos, and I brought in some at $25 to $47, all of them high-end. The client chose the $47 garment, having confidence in what we were presenting," Allen says. "It's nothing more than knowing your customer and what he's shooting for."

Be prepared to shift gears quickly if the client brings up needs beyond what he discussed during the initial phone call. For instance, Allen met with a potential client called Goose Masters, which trained border collies, to talk about uniforms. "Then they mentioned that they had a golf tournament coming and needed visors and caps," he recalls. "You have to change gears as needed."

Allen keeps a roller bag filled with extra catalogs and garments, as well as a few hard goods, in case such a change occurs - but he's careful not to overwhelm the client by showing too much too soon. "I don't drag out promotional items until I've talked apparel. The last thing I want to do is get them off course."

Try to keep presentations relatively short - about 15 to 30 minutes, Allen suggests. "You can usually get it pinned down in that amount of time, unless you've got a number of decision makers in the meeting.

Finally, wrap things up by asking if you can finalize the quote right then. "Don't be bashful," Allen says. "This is your business. This is about survival."

Don Allen, president, Alpine Graphic Apparel, has a very successful embroidery and promotional products company in High Point, N.C. His company was profiled in the July issue of embcommunicator.

Flier Fundamentals

Here are some tips on how to create effective fliers to increase sales.

Fliers are a tried-and-true marketing method that allows a business to effectively and inexpensively promote itself. Fliers can be used in a myriad of ways. They can be distributed from a retail location by sitting on a counter or being tucked in a bag. They can be placed on windshields of cars parked at events. They can be snail mailed or e-mailed, and they can be stuck on doorknobs.

The more targeted your flier is to the audience you are distributing to, the more effective it can be in boosting your business. By choosing a segment of your market to target, you can focus your efforts and better measure results. Be sure and ask new customers where they heard about you and keep a tally of their responses. Use this information when choosing your next type of marketing activity.

For example, consider creating a flier that promotes spiritwear for your local high school basketball teams. Create samples you can photograph or create illustrations in a graphics program that show the shirts and designs you are offering. Many high school Web sites will have the basketball season game schedule posted. Choose a night and distribute fliers on cars as they are parked for a game. Or possibly get permission from the school to hand out fliers to spectators as they exit. This same concept could also work for soccer games where you could hand out fliers at a tournament or regular season game in your area.

Guidelines For Design

When you are creating your flier, there are some good guidelines to follow to ensure you get the reader's attention and maximize results. The first rule is to put a benefit in the headline or at the top of the page. Some examples might be:

Show Your Team Spirit And Stay Warm in An Embroidered Polar Fleece Pullover!

Students Show Your Spirit! 10% Off All Orders With A Student ID

Once you've created your headline, come up with four or five bullet points that are convincing reasons why people should buy from you. Be direct and to the point.

Bullet point examples:

• ABC Embroidery offers quick turnaround and affordable prices.
• Choose from any of three styles and four school designs.  
• Customize any shirt with your own name.
• Embroidered spiritwear makes a great gift. Surprise a friend, player, coach, or cheerleader with a custom embroidered shirt.  
• See the full selection of embroidered apparel available by visiting our Web site at www.abcembroidery.com

Specials, Coupons, Limited Time Offers

A great way to motivate people to not put off a purchase is to make it worth their while to buy now. Offer a percentage discount if they purchase by a certain date. Consider offering discounts for group orders. Throw in a free basketball keychain or some other inexpensive promotional product for ordering by the deadline, etc.

Graphics

You'll want to take good-quality photos of embroidered samples to show off what you offer. If you have contacts at the school, you may want to get one or more students to model the styles. For any photographs that are going to be printed, be sure they are at least 300 dpi and measure 4 by 5 inches. Lower resolution photos are fine if they are at least 12 inches across in size. Low res photos are fine for the Internet but will print blurry and fuzzy if the resolution is not high enough. Also make sure your photos are well lighted and in focus. Do not use substandard photos as this will hurt you more than help you.

Text

To make the copy more interesting and easy to read, you'll want to use a range of different type sizes and styles such as bold, extra bold, italic, etc. Set off headlines in bold, emphasize key words in italic, and use subheads to break copy up and make your points. You don't want to over-do it but selective enhancements can greatly increase readability.

Tell People How To Order

Some people prefer calling, others e-mailing, and others want to do everything online. Strive to make it as convenient to order as possible. If they order via e-mail or online, set up an automatic responder that will sent the client back a message via e-mail that you have received their order. Be sure to include full contact info at the bottom of the flier including your Web site if you have one. 

When digitizing text, you need to build in pull compensation. Good text, when viewed on a computer screen will not appear even. Pull compensation will be worked into the text so that when the design is on the garment, the letters will appear the same height. Photo courtesy of Grand Slam Designs, Middle River, Minn.

In this design, you can see that the fill stitches come completely to the outline with no show-through peeking through. To accomplish this, you must use pull compensation. Because fabric distorts as it is sewn, you must compensation by digitizing stitches that appear to go past the outline on screen but sew properly when the design is run. Photo courtesy of Designs Today, Lexington, S.C.

Three Common Digitizing Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

By Barb Geer

Good digitizing skills come from practice and experience. Each time you digitize for a new type of fabric, you learn something. Most digitizers have learned by good old trial and error, which consists of digitizing the design, sewing it out, and evaluating the results.

To see poor digitizing all you have to do is take a good look around you. A trip to a local discount store should do the trick. On the other hand, there are equally as many great designs. When you receive your trade magazines each month, you are treated to the best of the best. Some of the world's best digitizers are featured on a regular basis and observing their work is a great way to learn what to do and what not to do.

There are some common goofs that most beginners make that can be avoided with a little information. Here I'm going to talk about three of them and some solutions. As you also will find out as you learn to digitize, there is often more than one solution for a problem. So here are some goofs I see and hear about a lot.

1. Lack of planning.

Before any good digitizer begins, he spends time planning and pathing his design. A good design works from the back, or objects farthest from the eye, to the front. You also should take into consideration the number of color changes. Less is better.

Pathing is a technique that has you digitize so that all thread of the same color sews at the same time. It should start with a color that's in the background. Another goal of pathing is to move from one section of color to another of the same color without picking up the needle. That is not always possible, and sometimes thread colors have to be repeated in order to retain dimension but this should be the exception not the rule. You also want to minimize the number of trims.

When you need to move from one area to another, walking stitches are more efficient than thread trims. Any time the embroidery machine doesn't have to stop saves time and increases productivity. With all the scanning software available, I find that many designs are poorly planned, if at all. Many customers have come to me with designs that they had "digitized" and ask why they don't work. To me, digitizing is more than mere scanning. Certainly a design can be scanned and converted to stitches, but after that process, a digitizer needs to edit that design and make sure it is clean and efficient.

2. Lack of pull compensation.

One of the most irritating problems is when the outline doesn't match up with the fill. Fortunately, this is an easy problem to correct. All the digitizer needs to do is extend the fill slightly beyond the outline or place the outline slightly inside the edge of the fill. That distance is determined by how large the fill section is. A large fill section needs more compensation that a small fill section. Why does this occur? Because most of the substrates we embroider on are fabrics that have "give." They pull together as the machine moves back and forth with the stitching. When they pull, the embroidered area gets distorted, which the digitizer needs to compensate for that. The term for this is pull compensation.

Text also needs compensation. Some letters have columns going across, while others have columns going up and down. When the threads go across, they lie nicely. The density pushes the threads apart and makes the letters slightly taller. The pull is sideways and is not very visible to the eye. When the column goes up and down, however, it is pulling the fabric together and makes that particular letter appear shorter than the others. Good text, when viewed on a computer screen will not appear even. Pull compensation will be worked into the text so that when the design is on the garment, the letters will appear the same height.

3. Little or no underlay.

Underlay serves several purposes. First, it is used to secure stabilizer to the garment. Secondly, it eliminates stitching problems on difficult fabrics. Third, it makes the design stand up on the garment. Fourth, it can be used to add dimension.

By following a few rules for underlay, you can solve most of your stitching problems. First, sew a line of stitching completely around the circumference of the design to tack the backing to the substrate. This also creates a nice solid workspace on which the embroidery is placed.

When placing underlay beneath a fill pattern, stitches that run the opposite direction of the fill will keep the fill from sinking into the weave of the garment. A light fill can be used as underlay and works especially well on hard-to-sew garments like piqué and polyester fleece. It holds down the fibers and allows the fill pattern to totally cover the area.

Finally, underlay on columns serves the same purpose. A walking stitch in the center will make the column puff, adding dimension. Edge walk stitches are great when a column borders a fill, keeping the column from sinking into the fill. A light-density narrow column works well on terry, making those hard-to-stitch towels a work of art!

Barbara Geer, president, Grand Slam Designs, an embroidery stock design and contract digitizing operation, has been in the decorated apparel industry since 1990. She is a popular speaker at commercial decorated apparel and home embroidery events. She also is a frequent contributor to commercial and home embroidery publications such as EMB, Stitches, and Printwear. You may reach Barbara at 800-569-8138; 218-222-3501; e-mail barb@grandslamdesigns.com or visit her Web site at www.grandslamdesigns.com.