Are you a passionate embroiderer who wants to turn your passion into a profitable business so that you can make money while doing something that you already love and are passionate about?

Fortunately, you have landed in the right place; in this article we will explore the steps on how to set up a shop and start a home embroidery business. In this article we will also share tips on being profitable at the start of your business.

How To Set Up A Shop At Home

When it comes to starting a new business, it is very important to have a space where you can store, organize and focus all the embroidery related stuff. Renting out a space is the first feasible option that comes to your mind. Even though the idea of setting up a new rented place specially for shop may seem very tempting but this is a decision you shouldn’t make without considering few factors which are crucial to the success of your business. First is you need finances to rent a place; if you are thinking that you will be able to cover the rent cost immediately from your earned profits then you might land yourself in trouble. This is not true when you are starting a new business. You should always be careful when incurring such fixed cost as you might not even be able to break even in the first few months. Such fixed cost will put you in unnecessary pressure making it hard for you to be profitable after overcoming such huge fixed cost. The easiest way to start is to allocate a space or a room within your own house. If you have spare store room then it could be a good place to start. If not, try setting it up in one of the closets you have by emptying them and setting up your supplies.

Organize Your Embroidery Space

Once you have allocated the space for your embroidery business, it is time to efficiently organize the space you have. There are four things you should mainly focus on namely stabilizers, threads and clothes/pieces to embroider along with supplies. Distribute the space evenly in order to use the space efficiently.

Stabilizers

Stabilizers are needed by every embroiderer and are a must in every design. Tear-away and cut-away stabilizer are the ones you should focus on when starting your own business as these are the most commonly used ones. Apart from the type, you should also consider buying these stabilizers in bulk because buying in bulk will save you cost on shipping as well as discount on the quantity. Buying a roll of stabilizer will not just save money but you will also be able to store it efficiently in your embroidery work space by using rods to hold the rolls. You can also buy precut stabilizers in specific sizes that are commonly used however buying a roll will give you the option of customizing the size.

Projects To Be Embroidered

Organizing the materials to be embroidered is as important to success of your business as other areas. Dedicate a full area where you keep your orders that need to be embroidered along with the supplies that are to be used on these orders. The best way to do is to make separate boxes for each order. This will make your job a lot less stressful and will give you happy customers whose orders have been completed perfectly. If you fail to organize the orders then chances are that you will waste a lot of time in finding the right supplies for the orders you are working on. This will put a dent in your productivity and work flow. If you are maintaining inventory of plain t-shirt, caps, hoodies for customized designs then ensure that you have correct record of available inventory and you store them in systematic way in order of sizes or colors.

Supplies

There are some general supplies like machine oil, scissors, hoops and adhesive spray that need organizing as well. These supplies are common for every project and need a separate area to store.

Embroidery Threads

Since threads are an essential part of embroidery business, you need to organize them efficiently. The best and the most convenient way to organize threads is a pegboard as it gives the visibility and easy access to all the available color threads. You can further specify rows for your everyday use threads and metallic or rayon threads. Regardless how you classify to store the threads, make sure your peg board is placed away from dust and light. If you place the threads in light and dust, chances are they will get too dry and brittle and break often reducing your quality of embroidery and productivity. Always try to maintain the temperature of the place where threads are stored as the inconsistency in temperature can make the threads damp from inside and can make them rot.

Tips For Success

After you have set up your embroidery space you are good to go however there are few tips that might help you run a successful business.

Buy In Bulk

May it be threads or stabilizers, buying them in bulk quantity can save you a lot of cost via discounts and free shipping. So, if you want to place an order, wait to accumulate the order quantity to get discounts.

Store Blanks

In order to start your embroidering business, you need to have inventory of blank garments that you can embroider on. Obviously being an entrepreneur, you can’t directly go for branded garments as it will cost you a big amount of money. Most feasible and sensible thing to do is to go for non-branded stuff. However, before buying the bulk make sure to run couple of tests on one garment. First is wash-test that will help you determine how the garment react after first wash. You will know if there is any shrinkage issue even if the vendor claims it to be pre-shrunk. Second is to embroider one garment and see how it behaves with that thread.

Use High-Quality Designs

Using high quality of designs for embroidery is what will differentiate you from the market. In embroidery business what implies quality is the attention to details. Achieve the quality you need by digitizing the designs with attention to details. You can do this by learning to digitize your own designs. Learning to digitize is of course going to take some time and meanwhile you can’t put your embroidery business on hold and turn down customers. Till the time you become an expert at digitizing, you can hire someone to help you in digitizing the designs.

Hoop Correctly

Hooping is also principal to the success of your business. For instance, you have 10 hoodies to embroider on. It is of utmost importance to hoop the hoodies the same place for matching placement on all.

Machine Investments

Although it might seem right to spend small amount of money on a machine but in real this is the only place, good investment is encouraged even for an entrepreneur. If you buy a poor-quality machine, it will cost you a lot in the long run by being down for maintenance every other day. Spending on maintenance, costs you money in two ways, primary cost is the amount spent on maintenance. Secondary and hidden cost is the loss of production time and hence loss of profitability.

Therefore, it is always advisable to spend wisely when it comes to embroidery machine

Conclusion

Starting embroidery business and setting up a shop at home may seem challenging but if you take a step-by-step approach and keep a close consideration of the points mentioned in this article, you will be able to successfully start your own embroidery business with ease.