I Want to get into embroidery please help

[tippmann5969]

i am looking into adding embroidery to my business but have no knowledge on the subject. what is a good starter machine that will do hats shirts sweatshirts and possibly jackets? i dont want to go broke buying one either any help would be great thanks

[tory]

A good quality machine is going to run you every bit of $10,000 and upwards to $15,000. Barudan and Tajima are great machines. Once you have the machine you will also need software to run it, and the learning curve is steep. You will need to learn what backing to use depending on what you are embroidering. To start it is recommended you use a good digitizer for your designs while learning everything else and watching how designs sew out. It is best to take all your questions to an ISS show as all the various vendors are there and you can watch the designs sew out and see how it all works.

[n7kon]

Unless you have a good market embroidery is a tough one. If you have to pay some one to digitize for you your profit is cut down fast. So you would need to be very good with a vector program. Then you still need a software to do the digitizing in. You can buy cheap ones but your quality of work until you get very good at it is cheap also. A good digitizing program is upwards of $250 low an thousands high. I would suggest you take orders and have some one that is setup do the work and you make a small profit to build the customer base. Then when and if you get the base you can justify the expense. A good single head machine and the software to use would run you about $25K you can do it for less but unless you have some experience I would not. I know been there done that.
If you need to order something I can help you or there are others I am sure. PM me with email address and I can give you some basic pricing.   

[TracMatt]

Depending on how much embroidery you will be doing will depend on what type of machine you will want.

I have a PR620 made by Brother.  It is a smaller machine but meets most of my needs.  You can get one with all the attachments for about $10K.  Or course I have tons of extra attachments that I thought I needed LOL.  I use www.artworksource.com for my digitizing or vitor at http://vitordesigns.blogspot.com/2006/07/my-designs.html they are both very reasonable and do great work.   I started 10 years ago on a home embroidery machine and knew absolutely nothing about it.  You learn as you go and I don't really think it is that hard to learn.  The digitizing is hard to learn.  I do a lot of my own simple stuff.  There are basic programs out there and then you can pay for upgrades as you go.  If you have any questions please feel free to PM me anytime.

Tracee