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| 2004
catalog |
September
Web Specials Big Savings For You! |
Feature Variety Hosts Silent Auction |
Product
of the Month |
Embroidery Essentials
Holiday Fairs Offer Great Exposure |
Customer
Profile Alphabet Soup |
Darold's
Design Tips Sizing Designs On A Meistergram |
Tech Tip
Adjusting Densities For 3-D Foam |
Design
of the Month Pumpkin |
Contact
Us We’re Always Ready To Help |
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September 2004
Stock up on polyester thread bobbins in September. They're specially priced at only $32.00 per gross. |
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 September only so don’t delay. Polyester
Bobbins (1 Gross) Gingher
3.5-inch Stork Scissors Heavyweight
Black Cutaway Stabilizer Heavyweight
Firm Tearaway Stabilizer Heavyweight
Soft Cutaway Stabilizer Water
Soluble Topping
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This compact, portable, six-needle singlehead, donated by Brother Intl., is up for bidding at the Variety Intl. Silent Auction.
Expand your apparel business with this vinyl cutter from Roland. You can bid on it by going to www.varietytextile.org. |
Feature Variety Hosts, The Children’s Charity, is the official charity of the decorated apparel industry. Each year a number of activities are hosted to raise money for youth organizations to buy vans to transport disadvantaged children to activities. This year there will be a Silent Auction at the Dallas Imprinted Sportswear Show, Sept. 10-12. Decorators can bid online up until Saturday, Sept. 11th and the winning bids will be announced at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12 at the show. Up for grabs is: • A CAPS Intl. six-color, four-station textile screen printing press with microregistration. It comes with a seven-year bumper to bumper warranty. The minimum bid is $2,200. • A Roland DGA Corp. CAMM-1 desktop vinyl cutter to create banners, vehicle graphics, displays, and more. The minimum bid is $1,750. • A Dakota Collectibles 2004 Stock Embroidery Design library with more then 20,000 designs on CD-ROM. The minimum bid is $4,000. • A Brother Intl. PC-600 with Starter Kit. The PC-600 is a six-needle, singlehead embroidery machine that is compact yet commercial. The minimum bid is $6,500. To
bid, simply go to www.varietytextile.org.,
go to Auctions & Raffles. Scroll down the page to the item you
want and click on the Variety e-mail address. Include your name,
address, phone number, and bid price and hit reply. |
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Designed for use with Meistergram zig-zag machines, Brilliant thread is made with a high-tenacity polyester core and covered with a long-staple mercerized cotton.
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Brilliant
Thread Offers It’s the ideal thread for high-speed zig-zag machines because it resists thread breaks and improves productivity. It comes in 96 of the most popular colors, and a thread card also is available. Each cone contains 6,000 yards. For more information, contact The Embroidery Store at (800) 504-9757 or e-mail info@embstore.com. Visit the Web site at www.embstore.com to see the full online catalog. |
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THE
EMBROIDERY MALL
National Network of Embroidery Professionals
One of Helen Hart Momsen’s most popular-selling items at local fairs and bazaars was apparel, pillows, and framed art with quotations. People would stop to read the sayings, and Helen would present them with two business cards. |
Promote
Your Business At Want to get the word out in your community that you do embroidery? There’s no better way than to exhibit at church bazaars or holiday craft fairs that almost every community hosts. For about five years, I had great success just setting up a table and displaying a variety of embroidered samples. Sometimes I took my machine and sometimes I didn’t. I found that if I didn’t take my machine then I could entice them to come to my shop to pick up the items. If people are close enough to get to your shop, one of the greatest advantages of doing local events is the exposure. You’ll get people saying, “I didn’t know you did this.” And if they buy a gift, you can give them a coupon to get the monogramming done later. It functions as advertising. When I used to go to shows mentally I would say, “This is for advertising. If I don’t sell a thing, I don’t care.” I tried to take generic things and items that would make people smile. For example, I would put a quote on a shirt and passers-by would stop and read my shirts. One time there was a lady who was laughing at a shirt that had a deer on it. It said, “Part of my life I hunted, and the rest I wasted.” She said, “That is my husband to a T.” I showed lots of samples of stuff I could do and often I would try to have a sample in every color. I would pack everything in apple crates and then I set up the apple crates and displayed my things in and on the crates. I never rented a table or a chair, instead, I stood outside where the crowd was and I watched people walk by my booth. I would give them each two cards and tell them where my shop was. Then I’d asked them if they had a business or if their husband had a business. Some of my best business came from other vendors. If I got a break, I would go around to the other booths and see what everybody else had. If I saw people who were not advertising their business on their clothing, I would suggest it to them. Or if they had product I thought would be enhanced by embroidery, I would suggest it. So I handed out a stack of business cards. Exhibiting at local events is not expensive and as long as you don’t go too far away, does not require that you have a trailer. Consider investigating some of the local fairs and festivals in your community and find out how effective this form of marketing can be. Helen Hart Momsen 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. Helen has written a 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.
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| Ashley
Edmunds
Although Ashley Edmunds specialized in baby items when she started her monogramming business out of her home, since she opened her retail location in November, she has expanded into purses, pajamas, and luggage.
One of Alphabet Soup’s biggest selling categories of merchandise is home linens such as sheets, pillowcases, blankets, towels, and pillows. Her window display has a big bed, which shows off the diversity of her product line.
In addition to Ashley Edmunds, the owner, center, she has two other women who work in the retail store taking orders and servicing customers.
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Home
Business ‘Quadruples’ Sales By Deborah Sexton “How much is that monogramming in the window?” That’s what passersby must wonder as they peer into the display window of “Alphabet Soup, The Monogram Shop,” a monogramming business located in an upscale area of Columbia, S.C. The six-month-old store proudly shows monogrammed blankets, slipcovers, children’s luggage, and more in its window, attracting shoppers eager to put monogramming on their own personal belongings — everything from horse blankets to bathing suits. “Everybody wants monogramming,” says Ashley Edmunds, owner. “They bring me anything you can put a stitch on for monogramming. It is definitely a hot commodity.” Even though many customers bring in their own items to be monogrammed, Alphabet Soup gets the bulk of its business from items it keeps in-stock, including a wide variety of home linens and decorative items, baby clothing and accessories, luggage, pajamas, robes, wine coolers, Koozies, and even trash cans. “That’s where I make the bulk of the money,” Edmunds says. “I don’t make that much from the monogramming itself, but that’s what gets people in here. If they bring in something, they’ll usually end up buying something else that we carry.” Business for Alphabet Soup has quadrupled since moving out of Edmunds’ home and into the 1,100-square-foot retail location last November. She had been doing monogramming for about four years with a partner before striking out on her own. “I wanted to get out of my house,” she says. “The business had grown too big, and I knew that Columbia didn’t have a high-end retail monogram shop.” At her home location, Edmunds had worked about 20 hours a week and specialized in baby items — bibs, burp cloths, panties, etc. — but she decided to diversify her product offering at her retail location. Although baby items are still a big part of the shop’s focus, now it also handles items by designers such as John Hart and Peacock Alley. “I’m the only person in Columbia who monograms leather,” she says. Product diversity — along with a prime location — is a big part of Alphabet Soup’s success, Edmunds says. “We’re a big hit because Columbia doesn’t have anything like us,” she says. “There are several places that monogram, but not a place that carries unusual and one-of-a-kind items.” Alphabet Soup — which employs three people, giving Edmunds plenty of time to take care of her family — has grown mostly through word of mouth. Opening one month before Christmas was overwhelming and “Mother’s Day and graduation just about killed us. It was like Christmas, where I wound up working 18-hour days,” she says. “I definitely want to get a second machine [to handle orders].” Edmunds uses a Meistergram (the Barudan B200) — which she happily calls a “workhorse” — exclusively to produce monogramming that she says outdoes the quality of her competition’s work. “I love the zig-zag stitch that it does. People love that look; it’s classic Meistergram,” she says. “You have to take your time, though, and make sure you have the right needle, the right tensions. Sometimes people tend to get in a rush.” Alphabet Soup, which offers gift certificates for customers in a hurry, generally runs about a week turnaround on orders. Customers choose their monogram color from a color chart provided by the Embroidery Store, and they pick fonts from monogrammed samples. Edmunds
has a word of advice for other embroiderers making the transition
from home to retail: “Don’t try doing everything yourself.
Hire a full-time manager, or you’ll burn yourself out.”
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Darold's
Design Tips By Darold Schubert When
digitizing a design on a Meistergram, you use a scale from 1 to
100. This scale allows for greater or lesser detail within a design.
For example, a design with small lettering and lots of detail might
be digitized on a 2.5 scale, which means the digitizer is allowed
up to 250 points to input all the details. A lesser detailed design
might be digitized on a 1 to 1 scale because less points are needed
to include all the elements of the design. The Meistergram works
out its stitch count by percentages using the height as its the
base. 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. |
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Three-D foam is a great way to add greater dimension to designs. Be sure and double your stitch densities when digitizing. |
Digitizing
For 3-D Foam Unfortunately, there is no single fool-proof technique for using 3-D foam. Because foam comes in different shapes and thicknesses, each job has to be approached differently. Here’s one tip for working with puffy foam. To achieve a clean look with foam, the stitch density is key. If your normal value is 100%, you’ll want to use between 40-50% stitch density, which is more than double the normal amount needed. Increase the amount of stitches and elongate the short stitches so there is enough density and coverage in your corners. Overlap your columns where they meet. Foam has a tendency to gap showing large bits of foam if you don’t overlap. Add a little more than your normal pull compensation. Foam generally looks and runs better on larger columns. This tip was taken from an article by John Deer, owner, Perfect Punch, a digitizing firm in Canada. The article was featured in the February 2002 issue of EMB magazine. |
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This versatile pumpkin design can be used for home decorative items, to create fund-raisers or souvenir shirts for school and city fall festivals, or to make treat or treat tote bags.
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Design
of the Month With fall festivals, Halloween, and themed promotions coming up around the corner, this Meistergram pumpkin design is ideal for a wide range of applications. Create shirts and tote bags for school fall fund-raising carnivals using the pumpkin design with the school’s name and event date. Consider hooking up with local retailers to create personalized treat or treat bags for Halloween. There’s no end to the possibilities once you put your mind to it. The design is one color and can be sized between 1 and 4 inches. The Embroidery Store now offers a full line of more than 1,000 stock embroidery designs for Meistergram machines. These hard-to-find predigitized designs are offered individually or in packages for cost savings. To order, simply call the toll-free number, e-mail, or visit the Web site at http://www.embstore.com.
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Write
this down!
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Easy Ways to Order: All orders placed on the Internet, fax or phone by 3:00 p.m. EST Monday through Friday are shipped the same day. e-mail: info@embstore.com
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