Re: Where to start in determining how much to charge for an embroidery piece?
Jimmy Lamb has a great worksheet that will help you figure out what you need to charge for you work.
Much better, more accurate than charging by the stitch count.
I don't have the link handy but hopefully someone else will jump in with that info.
Re: Where to start in determining how much to charge for an embroidery piece?
You're charging for time more than anything. The equipment, labor and supplies generally make up your costs, then it needs to be marked up to pay for rent, insurance, office supplies, marketing... etc... the stuff you need to stay in business.
Pretty easy to get to costs by figuring some depreciation on the equipment, get that to an hourly figure and land on a burdened hourly labor figure. If you are doing this yourself, you can never grow if you don't figure paying someone to do it as a cost.
Make some assumptions on how many stitches per hour you can do in a production environment (include loading garments, thread breaks and those wide columns that end up with a slower sewing rate).
Embroidery supplies (thread, bobbin, backing, topping) will probably work out to $0.05 per 1,000 stitches. Depending on your situation, a commercial single-head machine should work out to something like $0.90 to $1.20 in costs. Figure your mark-up should include about 35% of the retail price... $0.90/.65 = $1.38
That's a process you might try... your mileage may differ.
Re: Where to start in determining how much to charge for an embroidery piece?
Here are the factors we take into consideration:
Quantity
If the design will coming back regularly or is it a one off.... if one off then we will charge them the digitising fee....if qty above 300 pcs then we bear the digitising cost.
Stitchcount.....based per 1000sts but also consider and minimum and maximum price (eg) 2000 sts will fall under the minimum price
who is the client? regular or one off?
Nature of design....sometimes the client may have been defeated to get the logo done exactly as per the artwork by their normal embroiderer and they come to you cos they know you will do a good job....in this case charge a premium for your skills
We have done quantities of over 100,000 pcs...in this case we have a different way to price the embroidery. Eg. our 20 head machine should generate sales of $40.00 per hour....so we work back and calculate what qty can we get out using using the most efficient way of production. So eg in an hour if we can get out 120 pcs per hour then each piece will cost $0.33.
Re: Where to start in determining how much to charge for an embroidery piece?
I charge $1.00 per thousand stiches. That is pretty much the going rate. Also make sure you charge to digitize the artwork. That price is up to you and depends on the complexity of the design but $20.00 is a good start.
Here is what I suggest.
Firgure out all your monthly overhead costs. Rent, electric, supplies, and such. Then divide it by 160 (40 hours per week) and that will give you your hourly overhead costs to run.
So just say your overhead is $4.00 and hour, and the design takes 1 hour to complete.
That means you need to make $4.00 per peice to break even. So add that to your garmet price and then add $1.00 per thousand stiches after that. That will pay your wages.
One other tip is that I usually add 50% mark up to the garmet itself jsut to help pay for incedental cost. Hope this helps.
This is a discussion about Where to start in determining how much to charge for an embroidery piece? that was posted in the Embroidery section of the forums.
Where to start in determining how much to charge for an embroidery piece? 
