Retail Techniques & Management: Part II Embroidery Project

The key to retail is understanding the thought process of the customer, then providing products and services to serve that need. Too many storekeepers’ stock their stores with what they like, rather than with what the customer wants. Pricing follows those same lines. If your clientele is cost conscious, then you must have products that fit this need. Consider buying closeouts and overruns. Offer a “Discount Corner” in your store where you feature these items. If you get a good price yourself, you can still add in a reasonable markup while meeting the cost expectations of the customer. In fact, it can be said that buying low is more beneficial than pricing high.

And be sure to make your money in the product, not just the embroidery. Many Retail Embroiderers make the mistake of trying to make all the profit in the embroidery, while virtually “giving-away” the merchandise. Even if the customer just buys a blank shirt or baseball cap, you still need to make the necessary margins. If embroidery is added to it, then that’s just gravy on top. Remember, you are a Retailer first, an Embroiderer second.

With that said, you will still find that at least 80% of your sales will include embroidery. In a retail environment, many of these jobs will feature custom personalization in small quantities. (Low volume, high markup) It’s this aspect that makes retail lucrative, yet nightmarish at the same time. The downside is that custom means just that, unique and original the way the customer wants it. Focusing on this concept, you go out of your way to satisfy their needs. In the spirit of customer service, you offer the customer 10,000 stock designs and 50 embroidery fonts to choose from. Then you throw in an unlimited amount of layouts, coupled with 150 different colors of thread. Now you say to the customer, “what looks best to you?”

Congratulations, you have just turned a reasonably simple process into an overwhelmingly painful ordeal for the customer and yourself. Either the customer is so shell-shocked from the barrage of options, that he/she throws their hands up in the air and walks out or they decide to take you up on your generous offer of “letting them have it their way.” In this case you will spend the next two hours discussing every conceivable combination of fonts, layouts, threads and stock designs. And after all that, if they do happen to order, rather than fainting from exhaustion, you end up with a $20.00 sale for two hours worth of work. Though you might have a nice markup in the price, you aren’t going to make any money if it takes that long to write-up an order.