400 towels

[Gini]

I have been asked to bid on 400 towels for a hockey tournament. They want the tournament name on the towels. I think embroidery (probably about 5000 stitches)might be a bit expensive and was thinking about transfers. Has anyone used transfers successfully on towels? I checked Transfer Express, they say all of their transfers work on towels but I have never tried it. I worry about how they will hold up. Any suggestions?

[signman]

Transfers will not work on towels that have a definite 'nap'. I've done towels for years....
Cheapest way is direct screenprint...depending on the color of the towels and the color of the ink.
Might be worth checking out a 'contract' embroidery house for their cost to embroider-I get a great deal from Dick & Pat and they are right over between you and me- in Vermont.
With the speedframe system-5,000 stitches would be real fast. Do you have speedframe (clamp system) yet?
Roland

[Aaron]

You can get the towels for $1-2 and have them embroidered for $2 so you are in them $3-4 so you can sell them for $5-6 and not do a thing and make $800-1200. Let me know if you need me to embroider them for $2. Emboidery looks nicer and holds up better than trnsfers and if you get the microfiber towels from sanmar (TW51, 52, 53, 54) they are $1.99 and much nicer than the regular terry towels.

[Gini]

Roland- I have no Speedframe System...Can you clue me in? It sounds, well, speedy.

[signman]

http://www.hooptechproducts.com/slim_line.htm

this is the best pictures of it, but buy it from Melco and you save money and won't void your warranty.
it's the slickest thing yet!

[Debbie Rinehart]

Aaron,
How can you make any money only charging $2. a towel. I know doing 400 of them makes a big difference, but you still have to hoop them and them clean off the topping and backing when they are done. What type stabilizers would you use? And how many machines do you have and how many people running them? Debbie in Indiana

[Steve]

If you are bidding on a job, the specs probably say embroidery or screen printing on the bid so they probably won't take a substitute. I would give the job to a contractor and you make money for about one hour of work.

[Gini]

Well, I have 1 Amaya machine and me. BTW I tried a sample transfer from T.E. (EasyTrans) and it actually looks good. Not sure it will last but it looks good. This was on a regular terry towel. But I like embroidery. The customer wants quotes for both transfer and embroidery.
I wouldnt do either charging only $2 per towel...

[Aaron]

I have 12 heads and I would use Askermans waffle tear away backing. I use this on all my beanies and towels. I can run 400 towels on 2 of my 12 heads in 2 full days, take them home and trim them in the evening while I listen to music and have an extra 800 in my pocket for a few days work on 2 of my 12 heads. I have a contract customer I do work for that has a huge helicopter company that does thousands and thousands of logoa a year. We run 8-10k stitch logos for them for $3 each. We normally have at least 1 or 2 machines running these designs almost year round so when you are doing contract work its a whole different ball game.

I only owe on a few of my machines but a majority of them are paid off (my leases total $1000.00 a month) and I work out of my dads house so we have low overhead. I have lots of retail customers as well that I make the $10-15+ per garment on so that makes up for the lower $$$ contract work but to tell you the truth the contract work is steady and keeps me rolling all the time. WHile right now rolling out of the Christmas season many people don't have much work to do in Jan while I have stuff backed up that I had to put off and I have enough work now to almost fill my January. You can't do everything for the low prices but I can pick and choose jobs. Towels are easy to hoop, about 15-20 sec to hoop them and they normally runn real well. I love towel jobs as long as there is not lots of small lettering with trims but I can usually take care of the trims anyways.

We have 2 full time employees, myself and my dad and my brother works about 20-25 hours a week as a machine operator to help us out, he has a full time job at Costco.