Reason #6 why most embroiderers do not want to deal with a garment you bring to them

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We have general policy to not do work on customer-supplied items.  As early as 2010 we wrote blog posts about five reasons why we instituted this policy.  Nevertheless, every once in a blue moon we will find a peculiar circumstance that causes us to waive this for a particular client.

This holiday season, we granted three waivers.  “Maybe this time it will be different,” we thought.

 

Case #1:  Realtor friend’s Christmas gift to husband of embroidered boat apparel

A friend of ours whom we know through our Rotary club contacted us asking if we could convert a photo of her boat into an embroidery design and embroider some items.  She purchased from us a cap and a polo, but had already purchased an Izod 1/4 zip sweatshirt from a local Marshall’s store.  This job went off without a hitch, except that the Izod sweatshirt had Izod’s logo embroidered on the left chest.  With the customer’s permission, we embroidered over Izod’s logo.  It worked fine, but it reinforced our point that garments purchased at your favorite retailer were not designed with decoration in mind, and customers are not generally not thinking in this direction when they are retail shopping in a store.

 

Case #2:  Local water company’s embroidered safety vests

A local water company contacted us many months ago because they wanted to change decorators.  They explained that their normal mode of operation was to have their staff go buy whatever they wanted and bring these things to their old embroidery shop.  We explained that we would be happy to work with them, but that we needed to supply the garments so that we weren’t catching this “load of laundry.”  The company agreed to do this, but asked if we could decorate the existing round of safety vests its staff had already purchased.  Because this seemed reasonable and worth the risk for the potentially profitable relationship with a quality corporate client, we agreed.

When we picked up the vests, we got a closer look.  Of four separate safety vest styles chosen, not one was suitable for embroidery.  The client assumed we could easily embroider on the face of the pockets of two of the styles.  We could have…if they wanted the pockets sewn shut!  Generally, if you want something embroidered on the face of a pocket, it must be done before the item is constructed into a finished garment.

A third style was a mesh material that was more air than fabric.  That sort of material can technically be embroidered, but not without it looking ridiculous to the user.

The fourth style was the really fun one.  It was the staff’s chosen favorite because it was “full featured.”  ML Kishigo Class 2 safety vests - Seattle, Portland, AnchorageHere’s a picture.  It has Velcro on the bottom AND top of the left chest pocket flap.  It has elastic bands above the pockets sturdy enough to hold two-way radios.  All those features are obstacles to embroidering this vest properly.  How should this vest should be decorated?  It should have something on the back between the shoulder blades.  But the customer had expressed a strong preference that the vests be decorated on the fronts.  We explained that it was not feasible to place the company logo on the fronts of these vests.  The customer ultimately decided to compromise their logo and just use a thin line of text above the right chest pocket.  Using text alone is a feasible solution, but it still reinforces our point that some items were not designed with decoration in mind.

The bigger question is:  why would you want to compromise your brand identity because you insist on purchasing your own material?!  Quality embroidery shops are not insisting on supplying the garments because they’re trying to rip you off with substandard products.  They want to supply the garments because they want you to be pleased with the branded outcome.

 

Case #3:  Embroidered Carhartt Jackets

We have a friend who is a windows contractor who purchased a first round of apparel from us several years ago.  He came back to reorder embroidered hoodies and fleece vests.  The added twist was that his wife had purchased three $99 Carhartt jackets from a local work wear store, and this time he wanted his logo embroidered as a full back design on the Carhartt jackets.

Full back designs are not difficult.  But it’s a bit tricky to do embroidery work with Carhartt jackets.  They are bulky and heavy.

The weight is a potential problem because gravity wants to pull that heavy jacket right down to the ground.  The only thing stopping that from happening is the frictional force of the embroidery hoop onto which the jacket is mounted.  The bulk becomes an issue because if that embroidery hoop is not mounted onto the embroidery machine with great care, the bulky fabric can bunch up in ways that limit the machine’s freedom of movement, which can cause the design to be artificially “recentered” (not good) midway through a design, which usually means that the jacket must be destroyed.

With one of the Carhartt jackets the bulk got in the way and the design turned out poorly.  While I spent the next five hours pulling stitches out of the back of this Carhartt jacket, I contemplated my next blog post (this one).

When this sort of thing happens with a standard polo or sweatshirt that we purchase from our own suppliers, we usually just discard the garment and order a replacement.  It generally costs less time and money to replace the item than to try to fix it.  But this was a Carhartt.  We have a supplier for Carhartt jackets, but the customer had supplied these.  And that changed the calculus slightly.

From the customer’s viewpoint, it would seem to make no difference whether you or we are supplying an agreed-upon specific jacket style.  But that little difference is what changes a job from non-profit into a loss if one of that customer’s garments is damaged or destroyed.  Here’s how.  We do not make a large profit margin on Carhartt jackets, but our discount from our supplier on all three jackets would have been enough to make discarding the damaged jacket an easy choice — it would have made the whole jacket portion of the job a wash.  But with the customer supplying the jacket, we were faced with taking a loss of money by replacing the jacket at our own expense, or taking a loss of time (which is also valued in terms of money) trying to fix the issue with the customer’s jacket.

In hindsight, because it took five hours of time, we should have just ordered a replacement jacket and eaten the cash loss to save the time.  But once we started trying to fix the one it became part challenge, part obsession.  Ultimately, we managed to remove some 30K stitches from the back of the jacket and effected a solid fix that worked for our customer.

However, what we taught ourselves again is that it’s in our bottom line interests to not do work on customer-supplied items.

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