Stock Designs I  Embroidery Project

When I opened my shop in 1986, stock designs did not exist. With the exception of basic text, all designs had to be digitized and the prices were quite high. A left chest logo with 5000 stitches could easily cost $300 or more to have it punched. As a result, many customers chose not to have their logo digitized and opted for simple keyboard lettering instead. (The first keyboard lettering systems were developed as part of the machine, rather than a software program installed on a computer and the number of fonts was quite limited.)

But then came stock designs and the whole industry changed forever. Now embroiderers can create a small library of usable designs, ready to sew, at a reasonable price. Rather than $300 for a single design, punchers realized that the same design could be sold to lots of people, thus they were willing to drop the price to a much lower level. In the long run, they made more money by mass producing the design, rather than just selling it once. This opened the doors for embroiderers as many of their customers didn’t have a true logo to begin with. By merging an image with keyboard lettering the embroiderer could create a simple design for the customer at a fraction of the cost for custom digitizing. In addition it could be done while the customer waited, rather having to wait several days for the design to be digitized. This allowed for instant stitch counts and price quotes.

In the beginning, there were only a few stock design companies and their offerings were limited, but usually top quality. Over the past 15 years, many new companies have entered the stock design trade and now there are literally hundreds of thousands of designs available for embroiderers to chose from. Some of the top suppliers include Embroidery Designs.com, Dakota Collectibles (www.dakotacollectibles.com), Embroidery.com (www.embroidery.com), OESD (www.oesd.com), Balboa Threadworks (www.balboathreadworks.com), Embroidery Library (www.emblibrary.com), Floriani (www.floriani.com). There are now stock designs available for almost every conceivable subject and they can be searched for quite easily over the internet. In fact, a search for embroidery stock designs on Yahoo yields 40000+ responses.

Besides being simple to use, stock designs provide a very useful sales tool. Whenever you approach a potential new customer, you can easily create something interesting and unique to show them. For example, if you were going to try and sell tourist or souvenir designs to a gift shop, you could create some potential design ideas (and sew them out) to show the shop owner. This is a great way to impress the customer and move nearer to making a sale.