Printwear & Promotion The Total Promotional Package
Charlotte Darling, director of Amaya Sales UK, provides some top advice so you can get prepared for the Christmas rush.
As this edition of Printwear & Promotion lands on your desk or online, if you are one of the many embroiders working towards a bumper Christmas gift season you will already have seen an increase in business but will have your busiest days of the year ahead of you.
To achieve maximum output to meet your customers’ orders, and to keep ahead of the delivery crisis we may be facing due to threatened strikes from Royal Mail and others, speed and efficiency of production is all important. And it’s great to keep your stress levels down too!!
Here are some ideas on what you can do to help yourself, your production, and your customers.
Test ahead of production
This for me is the key to trouble free production. You may be trying new products to offer your customers, different threads to achieve metallic Christmas finishes, newly digitised designs, and text to vary your range. Make sure you have test run the designs on the new products. For example, special effect threads generally need to run slower on products than standard colours. By testing in advance, you will have your production slick and effective for when you get busy.
Consumables
- Make sure you are working with the best possible consumables to make your embroidery run as well as it can. If you are new to embroidery, you may not be aware how many different backings are available. Experienced embroidery companies will stock several backings, cutaway, tearaway, light weight etc.
- Aqua-film is a great product to improve the quality of your embroidery onto knitwear, fleece, towelling and fluffy toys. It acts to flatten the face of the fabric that the embroidery is going onto and is water soluble so just comes away with a damp cloth.
- Don’t save pennies buying cheaper bobbins and job lot threads as they can result in you suffering from more thread breaks and therefore more down time. Be aware that some compositions, rayon for example, can be environment affected, so storing your threads in a damp cold environment may give you problems as your machine runs.
- Needles are another big one – when you are busy and need uninterrupted production. Consider changing your needles more regularly than maybe you usually would. At times like this being frugal can be a false economy.
Framing devices
Accessories that help you frame products quickly and easily are something you can buy additional to your standard embroidery frames. These help you frame quicker, and more accurately which will result in the best quality embroidery with less damage and waste.
Top of my list are the magnetic hoops which need no adjustment and take the strain out of framing. Great for heavier fabrics and for larger areas of embroidery like jacket backs and dressing gowns, they come in the standard sizes and are square and rectangular for convenience.
Two other products I highly recommend are the Fast Clamp and Fast Frame system. The Fast Frame system allows you to embroidery in those tight spots. This system uses a sticky backing on the underside of the frame on which you would hold the product in place. Fast frames are ideal for sewing on to sweatbands, back of caps, sleeves, dog collars, gym bags, and on the front of the zippie toys, designed especially for embroidery. The Fast Clamp is an adjustable product and comes with three sets of different sized arms. In my opinion it’s easier to use than the fast frame system as you don’t need the sticky backing and is great for churning out embroidery on all difficult to frame items, ideal if you are offering personalised Christmas stockings.
While the Fast Clamp is a Melco specific product, the Fast Frame works with other machine brands, and I am sure your machine supplier will have similar solutions for framing. Ask them for help and advice.
Machine maintenance and servicing
My last point is an obvious one, but sometimes we all need the obvious pointed out. At Amaya we sell the Melco modular embroidery machines, and these automatically prompt you to service your machine as you go along. However, don’t ignore those niggly problems that you have been working around all year. If you have been experiencing thread breaks, poor stitching, inconsistent embroidery, speak to your machine provider and investigate these problems now, and if necessary, book a service visit.
So, to sum up the key message here to smooth, efficient, and fast production when you need it is testing, preparation and sensible spending. Investing in new devices, service and better-quality consumables will reward you with more production and less stress.
