Impressions - Embroidery Today 2024 - 22

A veteran embroidery professional
looks at some problems faced by
real-life decorators
By Jennifer Cox,
Contributing Writer
The good news? Business is booming. The bad news?
You're feeling overwhelmed by all the orders that are
now coming in. Fortunately, a number of solutions
are available. Photo by COC STUDIO
- stock.adobe.com
A
22
s the president of the National Network of Embroidery
Professionals (nnep.com), I have had the opportunity to
discuss just about every scenario you can imagine when
it comes to operating an embroidery business. For nearly
30 years, thousands of business owners have shared their
" challenge du jour, " seeking input and suggestions on how to proceed
in their particular situation. In this article, I will be sharing some of
these challenges, and the ideas we have come up with to help these
business owners.
What Kind of Markup?
I have a large company looking to order from me. Th ey have a store
within their company and also sell online. It will be a lot of merchandise.
Th ey, of course, resell to their company workers, and to whoever buys
online. I can't price my goods at retail for them. I would like to get
this client. I don't know what percentage to add to my wholesale price
in order for them to be able to mark it up as well and resell it. Th ey
off er caps, jackets, T-shirts, polos, etc. What do you recommend as
my markup?
What to Do:
Are you providing just the decorating or the product + the decorating?
Are you shipping to your customer or to the end user, i.e., the specifi c
person buying the merchandise? Are they expecting a reasonable
turnaround time, or are they expecting you to maintain some inventory
for fast fulfi llment? How are you being paid? Will they put a card on
fi le that you can charge every week or every order? Or do you have to
invoice and then wait to be paid? What will the payment window be?
I would factor all of these things into my decision-making process
to determine the markup. Figure at least a 25 percent markup on both
the goods and decoration if the orders are coming in batches. If, on
the other hand, the orders are coming in as single items, it would be
more like a 40- to 50-percent markup, as those orders are going to be
pretty ineffi cient and disrupt other workfl ows regularly.
Beyond that, the percent I would charge would be infl uenced by the
average size of the orders, including the expected turnaround time, the
pay model and any other factors that are going to impact your business.
If it is a large company, will its orders apply fi nancial pressure on you
as you have to order the inventory and then wait to be paid for those
goods? Are you acting as a factoring agent for them? If so, they are
getting you to use your money for a good bit of time and not paying
you for that privilege. Th is is not a great way for you to do business.
A Popular Product Discontinued
My customer has ordered a particular product for years. Unfortunately,
the manufacturer has discontinued making that product. What do I
do now?
What to Do:
Don't you hate it when this happens? It is so frustrating knowing
there is an order-and income-ready and waiting for you, only to
be foiled by the insurmountable lack of a specifi c product because it
is no longer being manufactured.
By way of a solution, I would fi nd out from the customer what their
http://stock.adobe.com http://www.nnep.com
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