Category: Embroidery Adventures

Construction Companies Use T-Shirts and Caps for Branding

8/19/2022

According to industry statistics, in 2022, there will be over 3 million construction companies in the U.S. With such market saturation, making sure your construction company stands out from the competition has never been more critical. Business owners can grow their construction company by handing out t-shirts and caps to help promote their company.

Your construction business caps and t-shirts should be high quality with a crisp, bold logo that's seen from 25 feet away. Your t-shirts should have a left chest print and a full back print that displays your logo and slogan in bold letters.

Marketing is valuable, meaning a construction company shirt is only as effective as the branding it displays. Analyzing how effectively your logo and slogan communicate your construction company's purpose and identity can help to look at different companies that have mastered it.
Before we get started, check out some t-shirts Northwest Custom Apparel has printed for construction companies like yours.

Roofing Contractors use Embroidered Caps and Screen Printed Shirts

T-Stone Construction uses Safety Shirts and Vests

Taylor Metal Products brands with Richardson 112 Embroidered Caps

Myler Construction uses Custom Coffee Mugs to highlight their brand

Erik Mickelson is the Blog Author at Northwest Custom Apparel

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History of the Custom T-Shirt Industry

8/19/2022

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The Making of the Apparel Graphic Industry

The industry that creates and sells decorated apparel is an American phenomenon that emerged over time due to changing lifestyles and technological advances. Social and political movements. and evolving consumer preferences. The terminology for this industry today includes "decorated apparel," '·apparel graphics," embellished clothing," or "the T-shirt industry." But whatever you choose to call it. The field encompasses a vast realm of components - from those who create, manufacture, and distribute leisure apparel to those who transform "blank'" apparel into everything from utilitarian everyday garb to graphic masterpieces and trendy fashion attire.

History of the Graphic Apparel Industry

A brief look into the industry's history will help anyone thinking of participating in the world of decorated apparel understand its roots, its cultural derivatives, and its continuing appeal.
The genesis event that started the T-shirt on its way to mass appeal occurred in 1913 when the basic white T-shirt was made part of the standard uniform of the U.S. Navy. By the 1930s, the T-shirt was marketed as a men's underwear product referred to as a "gob shirt" or
'gob-style" shirt, owing to its association with sailors.

Word War 2 and T-Shirts

During WWII, T-shirts, though officially undershirts, became a preferred choice as a comfortable warm, weather garment, favored by American sailors serving in the South Pacific theater. After the war, T-shirts rose in acceptance as an underwear staple in the 1950s. With navy veterans leading the way, they moved to center stage as leisure and recreational apparel.

1950's and T-Shirts

Among the factors driving the increase in appeal and mass acceptance was the leading role performance of actor James Dean in the motion picture Rebel Without A Cause in 1955. Hot on his critical success in East of Eden, Dean played a T-shirt-clad troubled teen and, in so doing, quickly attained celebrity as the reigning Hollywood symbol of alienation and volatility of the mid-50s youth culture. His death on September 30, 1955, affected the beginning of a personality cult following whose adherents saw Dean's T-shirt as an iconic representation of youth culture.

Marlon Brando, who, like Dean, embraced the naturalist ''method acting;' wore a white T-shirt under his leather motorcycle jacket in The Wild One. That visual permanently reinforced the "coolness" of T-shirts as the de rigueur apparel of the new American youth culture, as thoroughly masculine, and what any self-respecting teen male, rebellious or otherwise, should be wearing, especially when the ladies were around. Elvis Presley, too, merits mention as another pop culture icon who preferred wearing T-shirts when hanging out with his buds.

In the early '50s screen printed T-shirts -- and sweatshirts -- appeared, initially within the custom arena encompassing schools, colleges, clubs, and summer camps. By the mid-60s, printed tees and sweats had earned permanent positions on souvenir stands and college bookstores racks and shelves.
Colorful graphics emerged as an offshoot of the colorful custom art done on hot rods. Particularly in California and Florida, automotive airbrush artists enjoyed the fun and profit of turning their talents and high-pressure airbrushes from decorating funky cars to creating funky T-shirts, the standard uniform of gearheads.

One popular method of multicolor decorating on shirts was to start with direct-screened black line-art or heal-printed graphics and colorize them by airbrushing additional colors onto the designs. Taking their cues from the street rodders, California airbrush artists made decorated T-shirts a fixture at the beach, too, where colorfully-designed T-shirts quickly became the favorite garb of surfers as The Beach Boys exploded on the music scene. Philadelphia heart-throbs Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, and Fabian moved into their subsequent careers as stars of Hollywood's new genre - beach flicks - with Annette Funicello and other hot starlets; youth culture in the early '60s was being propelled by AM radio and network TV to mirror whatever was happening in California. And tens of millions of Mickey Mouse Club alumni, the first generation to grow up with T-shirts as an integral part of their attire, made T-shirts the virtual uniform of the Baby Boomers.

1960's and T-Shirts

The antiwar protest in the late 1960s elevated decorated T-shirts into a medium for mass expression as well as for individual expression. Until the Vietnam War, decorated rated tees and sweats told the world where you visited as a tourist, what school or college you were attending, and who your favorite team was. With the T-shirt already the after-class garment of choice for college students, young protesters quickly discovered their T-shirts could, with four spray-painted strokes, be emblazoned with a single icon to indicate where one stood on the question of continued American military involvement in Southeast Asia.

1970's and T-Shirts

With prices hiked way up, major gasoline providers soon moved to become not only the wholesalers and distributors of gasoline but also its retailers. The traditional American institution of the service station that dispensed gasoline was earmarked for extinction. Big Oil canceled station leases where it could to eliminate competition from independent operators and reduced the volume available to those remaining operators where it couldn't. The corporate-owned gasoline superstation had replaced its two-pump ancestor within a few years. Thousands of small neighborhood and highway gas stations were vacated by their owners, who lost their leases and the ability to procure the gasoline for resale that provided them with their retail profits and their main drawing cards for customers.

Needing tenants for these highly-visible abandoned gas stations, their owners offered low rents to anyone who could cover the landlord's real estate taxes and monthly mortgages. Enter a cadre of Baby-Boomer entrepreneurs, now in their 20s and 30s, in search of low-cost locations for specific newly-emerging business categories that flourished in these old stations: plant and flower shops, specialty food and produce stores, and T-shirt shops.

These new retail T-shirt stores offered immediate gratification through the medium of T-shirts decorated with heat transfers and custom iron-on lettering and at very reasonable prices. The generation that grew up in T-shirts and wore their political opinions in the '60s now opted to wear messages of their creation and colorful multicolor plastisol graphics. They could buy a while-u-wait custom gift for under ten bucks and had an alternative to sporting goods stores for outfitting the teams they -- or their kids -- played on. Customers soon began asking the retailers if they could provide what we refer to as custom orders for schools, businesses, events, and organizations today.

This Blog is Dedicated to Mark Venit

This blog comes from the works of industry consultant Mark Venit. Mark was a consultant for Northwest Custom Apparel for 20 years. We will miss you Mark.
Jim and Erik Mickelson

The Business of T-Shirts

In-text: (Venit, 2011)Your Bibliography: Venit, M., 2011. The Business of T-Shirts. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Mark Venit, pp.132-143.

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3 Reasons to Send Customers Gifts

8/17/2022

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Emails Don't Build Relationships

The world may change, but building authentic relationships never will. No matter what is happening in the world, one thing will always be accurate in business: Relationships matter most.
New digital tools pop up daily, promising to keep you connected to your customers and prospects. But the more platforms there are, the more fragmented communication with stakeholders. That makes it more challenging than ever to build and maintain relationships with the people who are essential to your business. Using solely digital tools to maintain genuine connections can be a significant challenge.
Reducing people to an avatar and a customer number is too easy

Why Send Corporate Gifts?

Sending emails is a lazy and impersonal way to thank clients for their business. You must provide a memorable gift to your client, and I will show you how to do that. As you all know, sending direct mail, corporate gifts, or branded swag isn't anything new. But it's necessary to take a more strategic, creative approach to have a successful customer engagement strategy. The truth is that people crave real, authentic connections. And that is what integrating a gift-giving solution into your overall marketing strategy and workflow will do

Three reasons to send customers gifts

Increase Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is the level of prospective customers' familiarity with your brand. They may or may not have formulated an emotional response or connection to your brand at this stage, but frequently, just being aware of a brand paves the road for future communications. Creating brand awareness is essential for developing interest in your products or services. Sending on-brand, personalized gifts, swag, or handwritten notes gets your brand in front of prospects and helps you stand out, a critical first step in making your brand memorable.

Build Business Relationships
The critical factor to successfully building a relationship is getting to know someone and demonstrating that knowledge. Personalization is essential for anything you send, whether a physical or digital item. The item can be as simple as printing someone's name on a sweatshirt, but it could also be something the recipient truly wants. Personalizing Christmas gifts according to the recipient's tastes and interests is far more meaningful than simply putting their name on something. For example, you might learn that a customer loves a specific restaurant. Send them a gift card (digital or physical) to showcase your interest in building a relationship with them.

Achieve Results Through Authentic Relationships
Ultimately, developing authentic relationships has an impact on the bottom line. Deeper connections are far more likely to result in new and repeat purchases. By helping organizations stand out at strategic points throughout the customer journey, sending can boost the volume of pipeline opportunities, brand recall, and thus revenue and return on investment (ROI). Because people are generally inundated with digital brand communications, sending on-brand gifts can also dramatically boost the efficacy of other communications. These can be aligned with a specific campaign or even aligned with a current event. For example, one Northwest customer sent out Doordash eGifts to cold prospects just as the pandemic was hitting. Clients loved this so much that it became a normal part of the customer's cold outreach process and today accounts for 40% of the company's outbound meetings. The same company also conducted a campaign that sent doughnuts (yum!) to prospects, which resulted in a 3x response rate compared to outreach without a gift.

Let NW Custom Apparel Assist You with Corporate Gifting

Northwest Custom Apparel can assist you with your gift giving programs this year. Contact our customer service department to personally work with you on your gift giving program. Please call us at 1-800-851-3671 or Email at sales@nwcustomapparel.com

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Yikes! Our Graphic Artist is on Vacation

8/8/2022

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We are starting our first day without our graphic artist, Steve Deland, who is taking a well-deserved vacation along the Oregon Coast. Steve has over 35 years of experience and is our foundation for creating incredible artwork for our customers. Walking into work this Monday morning, I felt helpless, like our company would crash and burn this week without an artist. The stress of customers calling asking about t-shirt artwork and needing it done quickly is a nightmare. We don't have anybody to replace Steve, so I am looking for a local artist to step in and help us on this week's art projects. I will take retired, current, and even kid artists so we can keep our business printing t-shirts.

A 5-year-old helps us with the artwork.

Ali, our shipping and receiving clerk, has a 5-year-old daughter named Selena, a talented youngster in the artwork world who will be assisting us. Little Giggles Daycare in Edgewood, WA, taught Selena graphic artwork using fingerpainting and crayons with which she created her graduation shirts.

Preview of Steve Deland's Artwork

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Embroidery Pricing Matrix Increases Profits

8/2/2022

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Price your embroidery with a pricing matrix based on cost of item

Pricing your embroidered apparel with a pricing matrix allows you to increase your profit percentage on lower cost items such as t-shirts and baseball caps. The matrix will allow you to say price competitive on higher cost products such as North Face Jackets. An example is when you sell a t-shirt for $8.00 (cost is $2.00) you are making 75% margin($6.00 /$8.00) *100 = 75%. You are making a high profit percentage on this t-shirt.

North Face Jacket Margin Scenario

Let's look at the North Face Jacket that you sell for $90.00 and the cost is $50.00 you are making a 44% margin. ($40.00/$90.00)*100 = 44%. You are making a $40.00 profit which is way more than the $6.00 profit on the t-shirt with a margin of 75%.

What if we kept the same margin as the t-shirt?

You wouldn't be price competitive if you sold the North Face Jacket at a 75% margin. $50.00/(1-.75) = $200.00 selling price. You need to have different margins based on the cost of the item.

Quantity of items and embroidery decoration

If you are adding the embroidery to the items you need to include your decoration costs and the quantity you are embroidering. Let's say we are selling 12 t-shirts. The embroidery selling price is $8.00 with a $4.00 cost per item.

T-shirt profitability (12 t-shirts) $120.00 profit (75% margin)

T-Shirt Selling Price Blank $8.00 (cost $2.00)
Embroidery Seling price $8.00 (cost $4.00)
T-Shirt with Embroidery Selling Price: $16.00 per t-shirt
Total Cost $6.00 (profit per shirt $16.00 - $6.00 = $10.00 profit
Units sold 12 t-shirts * $10.00 profit = $120.00 profit on the order

North Face Profitability (12 jackets) $528.00 profit (44% margin)

North Face Jacket Selling Price Blank: $90.00 (cost $50.00
Embroidery selling price $8.00 (cost $4.00)
North Face with Embroidery Selling Pricing $98.00 per jacket
Total Cost: $54.00 (profit per jacket $98.00 - $54.00 = $44.00 profit
Units sold 12 jackets* $44.00 profit $528.00 profit on the order.

Example Margins based on Cost of Item

Conclusion

As you can see you will make more money by doing the same amount of embroidery work by selling higher priced North Face jackets. Remember when you will have to decrease your margin percentage to stay competitive in the marketplace. "Work smarter not harder."

Author

Erik Mickelson is a contributing author to custom apparel blogs and editor of www.apparelgraphicacademy.com

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Everything you need to know about embroidery

7/15/2022

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Embroidery benefits customers and operators

The benefits of embroidery are that it gives an elegant finish and screams quality when stitching a company's logo. Embroidery operators find personal satisfaction while stitching a clean, crisp logo and seeing the customer smile. Embroidery operators must possess hand-eye coordination to take a thread and insert it through the embroidery needle. Our operators find stitching healing and allow them to relax and get their minds off of everyday stress. Operators have also mentioned it builds confidence, improves eyesight, and reduces anxiety.

What can be embroidered?

Embroidery is applied with a needle and thread, limiting the design's small detail. Owner Jim Mickelson says, "If you can draw it with a Sharpie felt tip pen, we can embroider it." The left chest logo position is the most popular embroidery location. It is on the left chest because when shaking hands with a customer, they will be able to read your logo. The left chest design is usually 2" tall and 4" wide, making it able to be viewed from 3 to 5 feet away. Embroidery isn't the best option for items you can't frame a circular embroidery hoop. Troublesome embroidery items include backpacks with zippers, polo shirts with a pocket, jackets with seams running down the back, and any lightweight fabric, making securing a stitch impossible.

How does embroidery pricing work?

Embroidery's pricing unit is based on the "stitch count" in a design. Generally, an embroidery machine can stitch 550 stitches per minute. Multi-head embroidery machines can have different heads, from one to 12 sewing heads, making larger embroidery machines more efficient and pricing lower. A typical left chest embroidery logo has 8,000 stitches and 3 thread colors and is the optimal design for an embroidery machine to be productive. Pricing embroidery is based on the number of stitches, machine speed, labor rate, and factory overhead. For example, if you know your factory rate is $100.00 per hour, use an 8-head embroidery machine and can produce 16 logos per hour. The calculation would be $100.00/16 = $6.25 per logo. I also suggest taking the worst-case production rate and dividing it into the factory costs, so you can factor in the operator's bathroom breaks, inefficiencies, and machine problems. To be safe on the above calculation, I would say the hourly rate is 12 units, which would increase the cost to $8.33 per logo

What should I charge for monogramming shirts?

Monogramming shirts using embroidery takes a lot of time since you can only do 1 personalized name at a time. I have seen so many shops price personalization too cheaply. You need to think hourly factory rate again at $100.00 per hour. Operators can stitch 6 monograms per hour on average, which is not a very good production rate. Once again, divide your $100.00 shop rate into your units per hour; $100.00/6 units = $16.66. You probably think, "I could never charge that to my customer." When you have a loyal customer base and provide excellent service and products, the price doesn't even come up in discussion.

Is embroidery profitable?

The question, "Is embroidery profitable?" is not a clear-cut answer due to many factors I will explain. Many people get into the embroidery business because they know many people and belong to organizations such as the PTA, churches, kid's baseball league, and civic groups. These organizations are a great starting place to sell your embroidery, but what happens when you are finished selling to them and need customers for the next 8 months? Newbies should create a business plan that consistently brings in monthly orders. I know your eyes are seeing dollar signs, but you need a solid marketing program to keep the embroidery orders rolling to stay profitable. An embroider starting out with a marketing plan, business fortitude, and doing everything correctly could see a $30,000 profit at year's end.

How to purchase an embroidery machine

If I haven't yet scared you away about joining the embroidery industry, please keep reading about how to purchase an embroidery machine. Our factory at Northwest Custom Apparel uses 100% Tajima embroidery machines, and we have been using Tajima embroidery machines since 1977. When purchasing your first embroidery machine, you need to determine how many embroidery heads you need to be profitable. A single-head machine is for the hobbyist that works out of a bedroom and stitches for friends and family. I will focus on the multi-head embroidery machines with 4,6,8 and 12 embroidery heads that will make you profitable. There are several different manufacturers of embroidery machines, and the popular ones in the United States are Tajima and Barudan. I prefer Tajima due to its durability, uptime, and low maintenance costs. Hirsch is the distributor of Tajima in the United States, and I suggest you talk to Kris Janowski, the Vice-President, and remember to tell Kris, "Northwest Embroidery sent me."

How do I digitize my own embroidery designs?

Jim Mickelson, owner Northwest Embroidery, punches a design in 1982 using a digitizing board.

We started digitizing in 1977 using jacquard punch tapes and a digitizing board where an 8,000 stitch logo could take all day to punch. We have gone through the struggles in the early years of punching embroidery tapes. Technology has evolved, and digitizing is simple with the correct digitizing software. Our preferred digitizing software is Wilcom, which is user-friendly and has enough bells and whistles to keep the professional digitizer happy. Wilcom is worth its price with the increase in productivity and the quality of stitching and is a must-have for a beginner embroider. There are free copies of embroidery software out on the internet by just doing a Google search "Free embroidery software download." Due to the glitches and lack of technical support on the free digitizing software, I do not recommend this digitizing route. Another suggestion is contracting your digitized designs to a professional digitizing company with low cost, quick turnaround, and fantastic quality. You will then ask, "the digitizers are in India, and their quality is horrible," which is the opposite since they digitize 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and are graded by their quality of work. The company we use for our digitizing is www.qdigitizing.com, and the contact is Steve Freeman, who has been a US digitizer for over 30 years.

How to choose Embroidery Thread

Embroidery thread is available from a plethora of manufacturers all over the world. I suggest you pick a thread supplier that is US based and has longevity in the thread industry. Since 1977, Northwest Embroidery has used Robison Anton thread for its vast inventory of thread types and colors. Madeira embroidery thread is our second choice when Robison Anton doesn't offer what a customer is requesting. Once you pick a thread supplier, stick with the supplier and form a long-term business relationship because there will be a day you are in a pinch and need a special favor.

Conclusion

As people tell you, the embroidery industry is not always lucrative and easy; however, with a marketing plan, you will be more successful than 80% of the other embroiders. Keep your head up and chest back and always stay positive, and you will one day have a profitable embroidery business. Erik Mickelson is available to answer your questions about starting your new embroidery adventure, and feel free to reach out to me.

Operations Manager, Erik Mickelson, shows off his Mr. Rags Hoodie.

Author

Erik Mickelson is a contributing co-author for Northwest Custom Apparel and has over 25 years in the embroidery industry. Questions on how to start an embroidery company, please reach out to Erik at erik@nwcustomapparel.com

Northwest Custom Apparel

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History of Carhartt Custom Embroidery

7/13/2022

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Little Known History of Carhartt Jackets

While you are on a construction site wearing a Carhartt hoodie or jacket and looking down at the Carhartt logo, you wonder what Carhartt's history was? You may think Carhartt is a brand for 20-30 years of age. Nope, you are almost 100 years off that guess. In 1889 Carhartt was founded by Hamilton Carhartt in Detroit, Michigan. Carhartt's started with two embroidery machines and six employees and was similar to Northwest Custom's beginning, but 100 years earlier. Old man Carhartt had a saying, "Honest value for an honest dollar." that resonated with many laborers in the Detroit area.

The 1890s were booming for Carhartt, with the Trans Northern Railroad laying track only 2 miles from Carhartt's original manufacturing site. The site was perfect for Carhartt to sell jackets to the railway workers. Plus, being so close to the rail tracks, he could ship his jackets to the West Coast. Carhartt's expansion grew to 8 facilities around the country and continued growing until the Great Depression hit.

The railroad opens up the West for Carhartt

Carhartt in the Great Depression

The Great Depression did thousands of businesses to close down and send their workers packing. Carhartt wasn't immune to this either; however, they pivoted and refocused on new customers and products. Carhartt closed down its jacket manufacturing facilities and started to make canvas tents from the same fabric as their jackets. The tents were for the workers of Roosevelt's "New Deal" program, the WPA (Works Progress Administration). President Roosevelt executed the WPA in May of 1935 to lift the bludgeoned economy out of the Depression. The Carhartt and the "New Deal" put thousands of workers back into Carhartt's factories, weaving canvas and sewing together tents for the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp). The CCC would cut trails in the newly formed National Park System. The CCC workers would again wear the Carhartt jacket and camp in the tents manufactured by Carhartt. It was a boom for Carhartt and its employees, who remained employed before leaving to fight in World War 2 in the early 1940s.

World War II and Carhartt

The boom of the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal had Carhartt riding on cloud nine financially before World War II started and drafting many male employees. Luckily, Carhartt could retain many female seamstresses and hire additional "Sally the Seamstresses" to work while the men were fighting off Adolph Hitler. World War II was even a better deal for Carhartt than the Great Depression by sewing military uniforms, such as cold weather jackets for European battles in winter. The soldiers liked the Carhartt jacket for its warmth and durability during the battles. One soldier even claimed that the jacket was so durable that a German round bounced off the jacket, saving his life. When World Two was over, Hamilton Carhartt was in his mid-90s and resigned from the day-to-day operations by turning the reigns of Carhartt over to his eldest son, Vinny.

Carhartt Custom Embroidery

The completion of the Alaskan Pipeline in 1977

Custom embroidery on the Carhartt jacket craze started in 1977 when constructing the Trans Atlantic Pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Nearly every pipeline worker demanded Carhartt embroidered jackets for employee identification and, more notably, staying warm in the sub-zero temperatures of Alaska. Northwest Custom Apparels founder, Jim Mickelson, started his company also in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Jim initially worked for the Atlantic Richfield company as a project manager based out of Tacoma and worked two weeks per month in Prudhoe Bay. Jim would sell embroidered trucker caps to coworkers and other oil companies up north. Like Carhartt, the pipeline workers wanted a warm sturdy baseball cap to keep their heads warm in the arctic.

Carhartt in the 2020s and beyond

Carhartt is known for its industrial embroidered work jackets that construction workers find a necessity to wear on the job sites. The popular colors of Carhartt jackets are the muted earth tone brown canvas jacket. The jackets are stiff, durable, and long-lasting but difficult to hoop and embroider. Embroidery companies must use special heavy-duty locking frames that are extremely expensive and only trained operators can use. Northwest Custom Apparel's staff is trained in using the Carhartt embroidery frames and is able to frame the stiffest jacket or bag.

Author

Erik Mickelson is a 2nd generation embroider and has been in the industry since 1997. Northwest Custom Apparel is a supplier of Embroidered Carhartt Jackets, t-shirts and caps.

Erik Mickelson is a 2nd generation embroider and has been with his family's embroidery shop since 1997. Erik's favorite jacket is an embroidered Carhartt Detroit Jacket.

Carhartt embroidery is a necessity for my HVAC employees during service calls to identify our company and address any safety concerns.

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Embroidery Adventures: Episode 1

7/13/2022

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Factory Tour, Embroidery, Thread, Caps, and Showroom.

In my inaugural episode of "Embroidery Adventures," I haven't laid out a roadmap to how I will create embroidery adventure videos to keep the audience entertained. I started by giving a factory tour of our embroidery and cap departments and ending with an overview of our showroom. I hope you enjoy the video and I would love to hear more comments about what you would like to see in upcoming "Embroidery Adventures". Stitching is in my blood and I am excited to share my embroidery adventure with you. You can reach me at erik@nwcustomapparel.com

Embroidery Machines

Our embroidery factory has commercial, industrial machines that can stitch 8 items in synchronization, which allows us to keep the embroidery costs down. You can see why embroidering one thing is costly because you aren't utilizing the other 7 embroidery heads.

The Japanese company, Tajima, manufactured our embroidery machines, and we have used this brand for nearly 40 years. The embroidery machines hold up to 10 different thread colors, giving you a pleasant color palette to make your design pop. The speed of the embroidery machines, on average, runs at about 550 stitches per minute to ensure quality and productivity. We ran the machines at nearly 900 stitches per minute, and they still produced crisp embroidery. The embroidery machine you see in the video is stitching polo shirts and fleece pullovers that are excellent choices for outfitting your employees.

Cap Embroidery

The difference between a baseball cap and garment embroidery is the frame used to mount the cap. The cap frame is circular, sits inside the cap, and then clicks into the embroidery machine. The machines are Tajima and can stitch 8 baseball caps at a time. Caps are a little trickier to get crisp embroidery due to the spherical layout of a cap crown. You are limited to the size of your embroidery logo to 4" wide by 2" tall. Anything more significant, the embroidery needle would strike the cap bill, causing damage to the cap and machine.

Showroom Tour

As you can see in the video, we have a fully stocked showroom with sample caps, promo items, workwear, t-shirts, polos, and much more. We specialize in workwear such as safety hoodies, vests, Carhartt jackets, and t-shirts.

Notable Customers

The video hits a panoramic shot featuring some of our notable customers over our 45-year history. The embroidered logos collages include football teams, fire departments, tribal, plumbing, Starbucks, and city and municipalities. Suppose you are familiar with the Discovery Channel and the show "Deadliest Catch." In that case, you will notice Captain Phil Harris and his son in front of our employee group photo. We stitched Phil's jackets for his boat, the Cornelia Marie.

Production Crew hits 20,000 caps embroidered.

On June 5th, 2008, our embroidery production crew hit a production record by stitching 20,000 caps within 7 days. This embroider feat hasn't been broken since then and may stay in the Northwest Custom Apparel record books for many more years. The order was for the release of Microsoft's "Halo" video game that year. Microsoft gave out a Halo cap to the first 20,000 customers who purchased the game. Our production manager at the time, Mongkon Ham, worked the crew for 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, to complete this order on time.

What's the next "Embroidery Adventure"?

In the following embroidery adventure, only time will tell what we will have in store for the audience. We are flying by the seat of our pants when creating these adventures. We would appreciate your comment and give us ideas on what you would like to see for the next adventure. I see embroidery daily and need your comments to keep the videos going.

Author

Erik Mickelson is a 2nd generation embroider, with over 25 years in the embroidery industry.

Embroidery is the bond between employees and their boss"

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Roofing Contractors use Embroidered Caps and Screen Printed Shirts

T-Stone Construction uses Safety Shirts and Vests

Taylor Metal Products brands with Richardson 112 Embroidered Caps

Myler Construction uses Custom Coffee Mugs to highlight their brand

Erik Mickelson is the Blog Author at Northwest Custom Apparel

The Making of the Apparel Graphic Industry ​

History of the Graphic Apparel Industry

Word War 2 and T-Shirts

1950's and T-Shirts

1960's and T-Shirts

1970's and T-Shirts

This Blog is Dedicated to Mark Venit

The Business of T-Shirts

Emails Don't Build Relationships

Why Send Corporate Gifts?

Three reasons to send customers gifts

Let NW Custom Apparel Assist You with Corporate Gifting

A 5-year-old helps us with the artwork. ​

Preview of Steve Deland's Artwork

Price your embroidery with a pricing matrix based on cost of item

North Face Jacket Margin Scenario

What if we kept the same margin as the t-shirt?

Quantity of items and embroidery decoration ​

T-shirt profitability (12 t-shirts) $120.00 profit (75% margin)

North Face Profitability (12 jackets) $528.00 profit (44% margin)

Example Margins based on Cost of Item

Conclusion

Author

Embroidery benefits customers and operators

What can be embroidered?

How does embroidery pricing work?

What should I charge for monogramming shirts? ​

Is embroidery profitable? ​

How to purchase an embroidery machine

How do I digitize my own embroidery designs?

How to choose Embroidery Thread

Conclusion

Author

Northwest Custom Apparel

Little Known History of Carhartt Jackets

The railroad opens up the West for Carhartt

Carhartt in the Great Depression

World War II and Carhartt

Carhartt Custom Embroidery

Carhartt in the 2020s and beyond

Author

Factory Tour, Embroidery, Thread, Caps, and Showroom.

Embroidery Machines

Cap Embroidery

Showroom Tour

Notable Customers

Production Crew hits 20,000 caps embroidered.

What's the next "Embroidery Adventure"?

Author

Author

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The Making of the Apparel Graphic Industry

A 5-year-old helps us with the artwork.

Quantity of items and embroidery decoration

What should I charge for monogramming shirts?

Is embroidery profitable?