Embroidery is the easiest decoration method to price accurately and the one most often priced by guesswork. The reason it is easy: the machine tells you exactly how much work a design is. The stitch count is right there in the file.
Build your rate
rate per 1000 stitches = (loaded hourly cost / realistic stitches per hour) x 1000 x markup
Two words carry the weight. Loaded means wages plus your share of rent, power, thread, needles, backing, maintenance and machine depreciation, not just the operator's pay. Realistic means measured across real jobs including thread breaks, colour changes and trims, not the number on the machine's spec sheet. Most shops run at 60 to 75 percent of nameplate speed once reality is included.
The full cost of a job
| Line | Basis | Changes with quantity? |
|---|---|---|
| Blank | Per garment | Linear |
| Stitch time | Per 1000 stitches per position | Linear |
| Hooping and handling | Per position per garment | Linear |
| Thread and backing | Per garment | Linear |
| Digitising | Per design, once | Fixed |
| Machine setup | Per design or colourway | Fixed |
Note how little of embroidery is fixed cost compared with screen printing. Digitising and setup aside, embroidery is close to linear, which means your quantity discounts should be modest. A shop giving 40 percent off at 100 pieces on embroidery is usually just giving away 40 percent of the margin.
Worked example: 50 polos, left chest, 7,400 stitches
At a £1.10 per thousand rate:
| Line | Calculation | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Blanks | 50 x £6.20 | £310.00 |
| Stitches | 50 x 7.4 x £1.10 | £407.00 |
| Hooping | 50 x £0.70 | £35.00 |
| Thread, backing | 50 x £0.35 | £17.50 |
| Digitising | Once | £28.00 |
| Total cost | £797.50 | |
| Per unit | £15.95 |
The digitising is 3.5 percent of a 50-piece job and 35 percent of a five-piece job, which is the only place quantity really bites.
Things to charge for that shops forget
Cap hooping. Caps are slower, fiddlier and higher-reject than flats. Price them as their own category.
Colour changes. A twelve-colour design on a single-head machine costs real time in changes and trims. Either charge above eight colours, or set a limit.
Names. Individual names are a separate setup per garment, and they are the single most common source of an unprofitable "quick" job. Charge per name, always.
3D puff and appliqué. Different materials, slower running, higher reject rate. Separate line items.
Where quality costs you money
Bad digitising shows up as thread breaks, puckering and rejects, all of which land in your cost, not the digitiser's. A well-digitised file at 7,400 stitches often runs faster and cleaner than a badly digitised one at 6,000. That is why what you send your digitiser is a margin question, not just a quality one.
Printer's Friend prices embroidery on stitch count per position, keeps the digitised file attached to the design so reorders skip the charge, and shows the per-line margin while you quote. If you are pricing screen print or DTG alongside, see screen printing and DTG.