Still today, five years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, its impact on independent embroidery and apparel decoration business owners continues. The way consumers find products and the way consumers buy products has changed permanently. 2020 has become a clear line in the sand. There is the way business was done until 2020, and the way we do business now in the aftermath. In order to succeed now as an apparel decoration professional, we have to adapt and evolve to meet our potential customers on this new playing field.
Getting your business organized and streamlined so that you can run your operation efficiently is one of the best ways to lay a solid foundation for success. Having what you need, where you need it, and when you need it makes it possible to get things done, whether you are ordering inventory, running your equipment, creating invoices, or marketing your business.
Here are several actionable strategies that you can implement in your business to help you grow your business:
1. Strengthen relationships with your suppliers
- Build strong connections with multiple suppliers to ensure access to quality products and materials. If you do not know who your inside sales rep is at the companies you order from the most often, ask the next time you place an order. Getting to know this person, and letting them get to know you and your business can give you advantages over competitors.
- Negotiate better pricing or case pricing discounts to increase profitability with the suppliers you order from the most. Tip: National Network of Embroidery Professionals (NNEP) members get these sort of discounts, even on smaller orders.
- Stay informed about new products and trends by signing up for the email newsletters with your suppliers.
2. Invest in learning & skill development
- Attend industry trade shows, webinars, and workshops. You will find out about the latest trends, colors, designs, and styles. If you cannot attend in person, check out the options available online.
- Join embroidery or small business networks to exchange insights, ideas, and information. The local florist may have a new marketing program that could work well for your business.
- Experiment with new design styles, materials, and techniques to expand what you offer. The next time you are in a retail setting with apparel products, look at what is on the apparel. How big is the design, where is the design located, what are the color trends? Are they showing something new or different that you could recreate for your customers?
3. Management & work-life balance
- Use time-blocking methods to allocate dedicated time for different tasks. It turns out that multitasking is not as efficient as touted. Doing some of everything can lead to nothing getting done. Order inventory two times a week instead of daily. Open your email two or three times a day, and handle all the emails at that time, maybe first thing in the morning, after lunch, and at the end of the day.
- Set realistic work hours and avoid overbooking your workload to prevent burnout. Very few embroidery and apparel decoration jobs require that you miss your child’s game, or work until 3 a.m., forgoing your sleep. If a customer demands a quick turnaround, apply a rush fee. Many customers then back down and admit that they need the order by a much more reasonable date. If a work call comes in after hours, let it go to voicemail and return the call in the morning. Enjoy your evening at home. You will come to work tomorrow recharged, relaxed, and ready to tackle the full day ahead.
- Delegate tasks where possible through hiring, outsourcing, or automation. Hiring a bookkeeper to post your expenses and income frees you up to do more sales or have more time to run your equipment, increasing your income.
4. Expand your product mix
- Offer additional decoration services such as applique, heat transfers, direct-to-garment printing, or sublimation, or partner with a local business that offers these services.
- Create seasonal, community, school, or holiday-themed designs and sample products that customers can order or purchase without customization.
- Partner with local businesses or events to provide branded uniforms or promotional apparel.
5. Leverage automation & technology
- Use an order management system to track projects and invoices. There are excellent industry-specific options available, create your own, or tweak a general business solution to meet your needs.
- Invest in updated embroidery software to streamline design editing and production.
- Automate email marketing and social media to maintain customer engagement. With these solutions, you can set it and forget it instead of having to work on it continuously.
6. Develop a customer loyalty program
- Offer discounts for repeat customers. Establish discount offers for bulk orders.
- Implement a referral program where customers earn rewards for bringing in new business. Rewards can be discounts on future orders, free products, or free digitizing on their next order, for example. Make the reward align with the value of the new customer. A referral who orders one shirt is not the same value as a referral who orders hundreds of shirts for their employees.
- Stay in touch with past customers. Email personalized follow-ups and special promotions. Email them when you notice a product that would pair nicely with the order they placed recently.
7. Organize your pricing & financial information
- Identify and track material and labor costs to ensure profitability. Tip: If you are not paying yourself a paycheck, why not?
- Use accounting software to monitor income, expenses, and profits. This makes filing your business taxes more efficient and accurate, ensuring that you pay what you need to, while reducing your taxable income as much as possible.
- Regularly review profits earned by order to evaluate your pricing. With this knowledge, you can increase your prices when you discover that you did not hit your profit level targets on specific orders. Tip: Contact me at jobprofitswksheet@nnep.com and I will email you a free job profits calculator worksheet that makes it fast and easy to determine your profits per order.
8. Enhance production efficiency
- Standardize processes to minimize errors and save time. If you spend time determining how to hoop something, or what stabilizer to use, create recipe cards to consistently run jobs that are on the same kinds of products.
- Run similar jobs back-to-back to maximize productivity. Nothing slows down your day like having to switch the equipment from flats to caps, back to flats, and then caps again!
- Maintain equipment regularly to avoid breakdowns and delays. Like any machine, your equipment will run best when it is well-maintained. Oil the machine, replace needles, and clean out the bobbin case springs regularly. If the equipment starts to sound different than normal, or if you have more thread breaks than usual, pay attention! These are often some of the first clues that the equipment needs some maintenance.
9. Strengthen & organize your marketing efforts with systems & tools
- Plan and schedule social media posts in advance. You do not need to reinvent the wheel every time you post. Repurpose your images and your content to share it across more than one platform. Post a short video, and then also share an image from that same video on another day.
- Organize a collection of high-quality images and short videos showcasing your work and your equipment in action.
- Create a marketing calendar for promotions and customer engagement. Create a template that helps you create posts that are not just “buy my stuff,” as those posts do not generate much interest or business. Tip: NNEP members get an customizable industry-specific marketing calendar template with their membership.
10. Build a strong brand identity
- Develop a consistent look for your logo and messaging. Define a color scheme and style for your online marketing and your print materials, and use it consistently. When someone sees your marketing, your company should be the one they associate with those colors, that look, that style.
- Maintain a consistent presence on social media and your website. Think of any brand beverage or car. Yep, you could visualize it because those companies are experts in creating and promoting their brands. Apply the same strategy to your business.
- Showcase customer testimonials and success stories. People are influenced by social proof, which is when a customer gives you a testamonial, or posts on social and they are wearing or using your products.
If you feel like you have days where you get nothing done for your business, taking the time to organize your information, workflow, marketing, and systems may be exactly what you need to move your business forward profitably. From working more closely with your preferred suppliers to creating and then implementing a cohesive marketing plan to making your business highly recognizable, each of the strategies above can make your business run better, more efficiently, and more profitably.
Take one of the strategies above and apply it in your business this month. See if it makes a difference and improves your performance or your profits. Once you get one in place creating the results you desire, consider adding another layer, another strategy. A gradual implementation of adding these into your business layer by layer over time will prevent overwhelm as well as make it possible for you to see the improvements as they evolve.
Running a successful business is a marathon, not a sprint. And as all marathon runners know, the secret for success is in all the things. It is in how well you prepare, how well you pace yourself, how well you adapt to the current conditions, and how well you learn from your past experiences. Take a look at where you are with your business today. Think about where you want your business to be a year from now. Decide what strategies will help you get from here to there. And finally — go do it! Nothing happens if you change nothing. Anything is possible when you create a plan to apply change or changes.
