Pricing your Embroidery Jobs

Pricing is one of those functions that everyone coming into the garment decorating industry struggles with. In embroidery you’ve heard the $1 per 1000 stitches – but how does that help you with a stitch out that is only 5000 stitches, but the project takes you an hour from start to finish? Would you be happy with making $5 for that hour minus the expenses?

So, what do you do? You do the math. We’ll start with general supplies - 

Stabilizer? - I like using precut cutaway – 1 7.5x7.5 sheet is .14

Needles? 75/11 sharps all the way -- .19 each

Thread? 40wt Polyester -- .00324 per meter

Note: A 1000-meter cone of standard 40wt thread using a standard 4mm stitch length will give you about 200,000 stitches.

So basic supplies are under $1.00 for a 4x4 standard left chest-sized logo. And I can use that calculation to estimate the supplies for larger projects. $2 for an 8x8, $4 for a 16x16, and so on. 

But what about the overhead expenses – the cost of the electricity used, and the general maintenance of the equipment? These expenses are a bit harder to estimate – and it can be done, and many do figure it out – but my math skills only go so far before it blasts through my head! So, I use the same dollar value I calculated for the supplies. $1 for a 4x4 left chest design. That makes the general 4x4 design file $2 now. 

And not one mention of stitch count.