2004 catalog

Find All Your Favorite Items

Technical Tips

Fixing Thread Breaks

May 2004

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May Web Specials

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 May only so don’t delay.

3 ½-inch Narrow Curved-Tip Scissors
Regular Price: $5.25 Sale Price: $3.99
#H11082

3 ½-inch Curved Tip Scissors
Regular Price: $3.75 Sale Price: $1.99
#H11050

Perforated Water Soluble Topping
8-inch x 8-inch x 100-yard roll
Regular Price: $36.30 Sale Price: $27.25
#B49108110

Sprayway Dust And Lint Remover
Regular Price: $5.25 Sale Price: $3.99
#B10495

E-Z Stick Spray Adhesive
Regular Price: $6.00 Sale Price: $4.49
#SM60037

Medium Firm Tearaway
7 ½-inch x 7 ½-inch 250 pack
Regular Price: $8.60 Sale Price: $5.99
B491207

Medium Black Cutaway
46-inch x 25-yard roll
Regular Price: $43.50 Sale Price: $30.45
#B4184625

Blue Hydro-Stick
2.0 ounce 12-inch x 25-yard roll
Regular Price: $39.99 Sale Price: $14.99
#H5111225

The Embroidery Store offers three weights of top-quality stabilizer designed to meet any embroidery application.

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Product of the Month

Cutaway Stabilizers Offer
Full Support With One Layer

If you’re looking for a top-quality cutaway stabilizer, The Embroidery Store has what you need. Its full line of cutaway backings, produced for John Solomon, are made using the preferred wet-laid nondirectional process, which ensures that embroidery receives the support it needs with only one layer.

Providing maximum stability for light and medium knits such as T-shirts and golf shirts, Cutaway Lightweight comes in 60-inch rolls in lengths of 10 yards, 25 yards, 50 yards, and 100 yards. This 1.2-ounce backing also can be purchased in packages of 250 precut squares in a range of sizes.

Medium Cutaway—which is ideal for medium-weight knits, terrycloth, or fleece—is a 2.5-ounce stabilizer, and comes in all the same roll sizes as the lightweight and one additional length, 200 yards. It also comes in packs of 250 precut squares in a range of sizes.

Heavyweight Cutaway, 3 ounces, is for jobs that require maximum support for extra-large stitch counts. It comes in all the same sizes as the lightweight.

In addition to offering supplies, the company has a supportive customer service staff to help you with problems and questions. You can call (800) 504-9757 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. anytime Monday through Friday. Or e-mail questions to info@embstore.com.

The Embroidery Store stocks more than 10,000 parts and supplies and offers the top brands in the industry. All orders placed on the Internet, fax, or phone by 3 p.m. EST Monday through Friday are shipped the same day. Check the Web site often at www.embstore.com for new products and specials. For more information, contact The Embroidery Store at (800) 504-9757 or e-mail info@embstore.com

Technical Tips

Troubleshooting Threadbreaks

One of the most annoying production slowdowns in embroidery is thread breaks. Good machine maintenance and proper tension can reduce the number of incidences but sometimes they’re unavoidable. Here’s two reasons why thread might be breaking:

If you notice a small tuft of fiber on the end of the thread where it’s broken, this is most likely caused by too much tension or a poor-quality thread. Try loosening the tension and if that doesn’t work, try a different cone of thread.

If the broken thread end has a bend in it and a tuft at the end, there may be improper placement of the stitch relative to the previous stitch. Try editing the stitch placement so it does not split the previous stitch or redigitize the design.

San FranStitchco Inc/On-2 Custom Jackets
6819 Redwood Drive, Suite E
Cotati, CA 94931
(707) 795 6172
Fax: (707) 795 6182
darryl@sfemb.com

Darryl Klose, president, San FranStitchco, started out his company as strictly contract before focusing on the promotional products industry.

Starting out with a single 12-head Barudan 10 years ago, Darryl Klose, president, San FranStitchco, has built up his company to 65 heads and 13 employees.

For the past three years, Klose has focused on the motorcycle market as his area of growth. The company manufactures custom upscale jackets and specializes in high-stitch-count jacket-back designs.

Customer Profile

Embroiderer Puts His Heart
In San FranStitchco

Decorator hawgs up sales in the motorcycle industry with high-stitch (and high-priced) custom jackets.

By Deborah Sexton

Darryl Klose rode the wave of growth in the promotional products industry for years to grow his own contract embroidery business. But when sales to that industry started to slow down a few years ago, Klose hopped onto a new ride: motorcycles.

“There was a time when we couldn’t answer the faxes fast enough,” says Klose, owner, San FranStitchco, Cotati, Calif., of his shop’s heyday servicing promotional products distributors. “But we slowly switched over to direct sales, and now we manufacture fashion motorcycle apparel.”

Motorcycle apparel makes up nearly 40% of San FranStitchco’s business (the rest comes from promotional products), and those garments are loaded with 300,000-stitch embroidery. “We specialize in high-stitch-count jackets,” Klose says. “It’s a product where you have some margin; you can load it up with embroidery and make a long buck.”

Klose keeps the motorcycle niche rolling by exhibiting at trade shows for custom bike builders, an especially hot trend with cable TV shows giving the niche market lots of exposure. “The bike industry is gigantic,” he says. “We appeal to people in the trade, people who make brakes, wheels, and handle bars. Our jackets appeal to the motor industry, and that’s what we’re good at.”

San FranStitchco—which also does business as On-2 Custom Jackets—makes the jackets in its own factory, so they are embellished before they’re assembled. “Part of the appeal is that the jackets are American-made,” Klose says. “An average order is a dozen pieces—varsity jackets (wool bodies with leather sleeves), leather jackets, and chopper jackets. A typical varsity jacket sells for $100; ours are $135 blank.”

Those big-ticket items provide a profit margin that’s difficult to get servicing PPDs, Klose says. “If a customer’s only issue is price, we can’t make money. We’ve weeded out the distributors who weren’t profitable,” he says. “We have a very broad-based promotional customer, everything from computer bags and denim shirts to totes and fleece blankets.”

Klose credits his many years in the fur industry for teaching him that profits and business are easier in a niche with less competition. He had spent most of his adult life in that industry, until about 1990, when the fur business “collapsed,” he says. Almost on a whim, he decided to enter the embroidery business. “I’d seen embroidery done, and I liked it,” Klose says of his decision.

He purchased a 12-head embroidery machine and started luring customers by simply thumbing through the phone book. Intent on avoiding dealing with the public, Klose avoided retail sales by calling every embroiderer to see if they needed help with their orders. “This was like shooting fish in a barrel,” he recalls. “So we grew.”
He grew, in fact, all the way up to 65 embroidery heads: two 12-heads, two 15-heads, two 4-heads, and three single heads, all in a 7,600-square-foot facility with 13 employees—and $1.2 million annually in sales.

San FranStitchco handles all of its digitizing in-house, entrusting its work to a single digitizer. “He’s a busy man,” Klose says. “The challenge is that when you digitize a design with 200,000 stitches, you don’t want to do many sewouts to get it right. Our digitizer always attends seminars to develop his expertise. You’ve got to surround yourself with people like him, people who are motivated and love what they do.”

Klose has other advice for decorators: Don’t be afraid to charge what your product is really worth. “Everybody is so intimidated,” he says. “If a guy loves his logo, he doesn’t mind paying $300 for a garment. If he’s selling a custom motorcycle for $70,000, $300 for a garment is nothing.”

Darold's Design Tips

How To Increase
Stitch Density

By Darold Schubert

A great way to increase the coverage of a design with a fill area without adding stitches is to double your thread. I place two cones of the same thread beside each other. I run them through all the thread tensioners and the needle together. You may be surprised how well it works with no needed adjustments. I also use two different color threads to create a unique look.

Darold Schubert co-owns Frolic Athletic Embroidery Digitizing based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, which offers contract embroidery and digitizing services. He has been digitizing for the past 15 years. He digitizes in any standard format, but specializes in Meistergram designs. You may contact him at (800) 453-4477 or e-mail darold@frolicembroidery.com.

Web Wise

How To Drive More Traffic
To Your Embroidery Web Site

By Jason Sherrill

Jason Sherrill is president of InetSolution, a company that offers Web site software and development, Web site hosting, consulting, and products to make Web sites easier to use, less expensive, and more secure. He has a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in accounting with an emphasis in business information systems from Western Michigan University. He has 10 years of e-commerce business operations experience and nearly seven years in Internet development. InetSolution can assist you with creating accounts and advertising campaigns using the tips in this article and other pay-per-click advertising solutions. You can contact Sherrill at http://www.inetsolution.com.

When purchasing apparel to embroider on, be very conscious of the weight of the fabric. Heavier weight goods have a higher perceived quality, are more durable, and wash better than lightweight fabrics.

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Embroidery Essentials

Know Your Fabrics

By Helen Hart Momsen

The yarn that knits the fabric has a certain diameter, texture and stretch. Once that yarn is made into fabric, how it’s fashioned adds another dimension to its quality. It can be dense or open, single- or double-knit, combed or mercerized. Is the fabric coated or treated for weatherproofing or breathability? It all affects the feel and stability of the fabric for embroidery purposes.

When the weave is tighter, the density is higher—just like in digitizing or editing. When we increase density, stitches are closer together and carry more weight. Embroiderers see the weight of goods as a positive purchasing factor, and yes, heavier fabric tolerates more stitches (warranted or not) better than a lightweight one.

The weight also adds durability and better "recovery" after washing and wearing. Make sure that the weight of the goods you buy is the result of a heavier yarn, not just additives that help them appear dense. Once the mask of chemicals is washed away, there may be shrinkage and design puckering.

Ask your suppliers for an explanation of manufacturing processes and weights: premium, light, medium, heavy, and super heavy in some cases. Pay attention to how various weights and definitions differ between manufacturers. Heavyweight may mean something different from one to another.

Helen Hart Momson has been in embroidery for more than 20 years. In addition to running her home-based embroidery and digitizing company, she is a regular contributor to industry trade magazines and a speaker at industry events. She also owns the Embroidery Line www.EmbroideryLine.net, which offers professional and aspiring embroiderers with a free, uncensored forum for education and idea sharing.

This tip was extracted from her latest book, “Professional Embroidery: Business by Design” (Binnacle Publishers, 2003), which covers a wide range of topics of interest to any embroiderer getting started. For more information, go to www.HelenHart.com or e-mail her at Hart@HelenHart.com.

Design of the Month

Tap Into Golf Market
With Specialized Stock Designs

May flowers are blooming and the golf industry is booming. This time of year, individual duffers, school teams, charity tournaments, and corporate events all hit the links. Paired with lettering, this golfer design, #MSM00077, works well on everything from placket shirts, caps, and towels to shoe bags, golf club head covers, and golf umbrellas. It features two colors and, at the 2-inch size, measures approximately 3,000 stitches. As always with textured fabric such as piqué, keep stitches lofty and lifted above the surface by using soluble topping, light background “fill” or appliqué material.

The Embroidery Store now offers a full line of more than 1,000 stock embroidery designs for Meistergram machines. These hard-to-find predigitized images are offered individually or in packages for cost savings. To order, simply call the toll-free number, e-mail, or visit the Web site.