Digitizing easiest way, fees, samples for clients?

[Impressions Embroidered Apparel]

Hi,

We have Design Shop Pro +, but just got it. So we will be using other digitizing services for now. If you wanted to do a sew out sample for a client and you need a digitized file to do it, what do most of you do? One client wanted to see a sample shirt with their logo. The shirt would be $8, plus shipping, the digitizing fee would be $125 (complex logo), plus our time to set it up. So over $135 for an order that we might not get, or could end up being an order for 3 shirts.

In general:

1. What is the best format to request client files in (.IA)?

2. I suspect most clients will have a .jpg file. Is there a way to convert a .jpg into stitches?

3. Do you offer a sample logo on a shirt to a client? Do you make them pay you upfront for Digitizing, setup, and the sample item? Or do you tell them the logo will look pretty much like the logo on their business card, but it will appear on the left chest of the shirt in the catalog?

4. What fees do you charge and when do you charge them to the client in your work flow?

Ideas?

Thanks,
Steve

[levelbest]

1. What is the best format to request client files in (.IA)?

We request vector based files - .ai .eps etc. Short of that - I tell them I need a copy of their logo as large as they can give me... figuring I can always scale down if needed.


2. I suspect most clients will have a .jpg file. Is there a way to convert a .jpg into stitches?

If you are looking to do auto digitizing, I would suspect that all but the simplest logos are going to leave you dissapointed. Illustrator CS2 has some neat features that can covert images to paths which might get you something decent enough to work with.


3. Do you offer a sample logo on a shirt to a client? Do you make them pay you upfront for Digitizing, setup, and the sample item? Or do you tell them the logo will look pretty much like the logo on their business card, but it will appear on the left chest of the shirt in the catalog?

Nope. I will show clients a book of samples we have done for others, but time is money, so if they want something digitized, they have to pay for it

As I mentioned previously on the list, we do a 2 shirts and digitizing for $75. Most cases, we'll make about $10 on that but on a complex logo, you might break even or loose a little money. I would love it if you would send me a copy of the logo (private message me and I'll give you an address to send it to). I can suggest a few places - a few that have flat fees for left chest logos that could make this work for you. The price you quoted was way too high.


4. What fees do you charge and when do you charge them to the client in your work flow?

We try to keep everything simple. Digitizing fee or setup charge to put it in plain language (if they don't buy the special) and then just a price per item. We don't break out sewout from the shirt. Only exception is to put names on something where we'll charge a flat fee of like $3-5 or something to add to any polo.