How to Train a New Employee for your Embroidery Business does not have to be a difficult  procedure, but a training program is a must for the success of any embroidery business. Each new employee must be trained thoroughly on one process before they are allowed to move onto the next process.

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New Features For Embroidery Tips And More Video Training Site

I am so happy to announce that we are adding some exciting new features for all of the members of our Embroidery Tips And More Embroidery video training site.

• Personal Call In Time Once Per Month
• Personal 15 Minute Consultation For All New Members
• Private Members Forum
• Webinar Will Be Held During The Day Time Hours Every Other Month

Call In Time-Personal One on One Time With The Embroidery Coach

This new feature will start on January 21st.  This call in time will be held the 3rd Thursday of every month.  This will be your personal one on one time that you can call in and ask me anything that you would like to know about running your embroidery business.   I am very excited about being able to spend time with you personally.

I would love to be able to work with each person  on a one on one basis,  and I thought that this will be the  best way for me to be able to connect with you and give you your own personal time with me. You will be allowed 10 minutes for this call. Save up your questions and be ready for this one on one time with me.  All members will receive an email with the actual call in times and phone number to use.

Personal FREE Embroidery Business Consultation For All New Members

Each new member will be called and welcomed.  You will receive a 15 minute consultation about your embroidery business.  This will give me a chance to find out a little more about you, your business and will help me to discover how I can help you more with your embroidery business.  Each new member will be sent an email to schedule their Free consultation.

Private Embroidery Tips And More Club Members Forum

We are working on a Private Members forum.  This will only be available to all of the Embroidery Tips and More.com Embroidery Club members.  This forum will be open to any questions about embroidery applications, design issues,  or any other embroidery business issues.  I will be announcing when the Forum is open.

New Day Time Embroidery Webinar Hours

I have heard from many of you that  you cannot attend the Embroidery webinars because they are held in the evening.  I have decided to rotate the times for the webinars so that you will be able to attend during day if the night times for the webinars have been impossible to work with your schedule.  Traditionally our webinars have been held at 8pm Eastern Time and this is not always the best time for everyone.

When I first started holding the Embroidery webinars, I asked for the best times and this time worked for the majority of the club members.  Times have changed and I have decided to rotate the times for the webinars to best suit everyone.   The webinar this month will be held at the same time, at 8pm on the last Tuesday of the month,  but next month I would like to start the rotation schedule.

The recorded version of the Embroidery webinars has been available for all of those that register, but the live interaction is always better for the attendees.  I will continue holding the webinar on the last Tuesday of the month, but I would like to have some opinions as to which times of the day works best for you.  At the end of this post, I would like for you to comment and let me know which times will work for you.

• 11:00 am Eastern Time
• 1:00 pm Eastern Time
• 2:00 pm Eastern Time
• 4:00 pm Eastern Time

I would like to accommodate everyone, but obviously that is impossible.  If you will please let me know which time is best for you, then I will schedule the day time webinar for the majority.

Thank you so much and I am really looking forward to working with each and everyone of my Embroidery Tips and More Embroidery Club Members in 2010!  This is going to be such a great year!!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach
Author of the forth coming book,
“The Truth About Embroidery Business Success”

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Each morning I receive a Quote of the day from Brian Tracy.  My quote of the day is “Time Flies.  It is up to you to be the navigator”!  This quote was first by Robert Orben, but it is so timely, I just had to share it with you.  Thank you Brian Tracy for those words of wisdom for the day!

I am sitting here in my bed, recouping from surgery with my foot in the air!  I am working from my laptop, my phone is ringing off the wall with requests for digitizing of embroidery designs, emails are coming in with  more requests for embroidery designs and I am trying to prepare for Lesson 2 of our series teaching home embroiderers “How To Create Their Own On Line Embroidery Marketing System”!   I thought the quote was totally prefect for the day and I know that all embroiderers will understand when they read this email.

When you are involved in your own business, you do not have the luxury of taking too much time off.  You have to keep going and adjust to whatever the circumstances are that are thrown at you from hour to hour.  This is especially true for embroiderers.

Last night about 8pm my Son came in, Mom I need a favor!  He is still the manager of the embroidery shop that I owned for 25 years.  He had a last minute order of caps that needs to be done today and of course had no design for it.  He did not need the digitized design until noon today!  Of course Mom came to the rescue!  I was preparing for my upcoming webinar at that time, but dropped  what I was going to digitize his design!

That is a typical in the life of an embroiderer! That is unless, you are the type that has everything planned out and lets nothing change your plans!  Do you know anyone like that?  I don’t!

Stop, Have A Cup Of Tea And Laugh!

Just remember when you day starts off like this one has for me, the first thing you need to do is Stop, have a cup of tea and laugh!  That is My Quote for the day!!

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There are several low cost methods that you can use to prospect for new customers.  You can pay to advertise or you can attract prospects for free.  I have always been very partial to the FREE end of advertising for obvious reasons.  Besides the fact that it is FREE, you usually will  find better prospects using the Free methods  That has been my experience in the past.

• Networking  Off  Line
• Networking On Line
• Donate Products & Services To Charity For Fund Raising Events
• Ask For Referrals
• Attend Trade Shows In Your Niche
• Offer To Trade Your Products & Services
• Press Releases

In the past I spent a lot of money on advertising only to find out that most of the time it did not work the way that I expected it to work!  The newspaper was the most expensive method I ever tried and I never once received the results that I was looking for.  I never even broke even on my investment.

The only paid advertising that ever worked for me was the TV and of course that is not free but I did trade my products and services for the advertising and it made it very low cost.  In today’s market you can use the  trade dollars to advertise on their websites that a lower cost rather than actually running an add on the TV. Your name is displayed for a longer period of time and can be seen by people over and over.

There are so many ways to prospect for new customers and many opportunities to make connections with people in all areas of your life. If you keep your eyes and ears wide open, you will find a gold mine right in front of you!

If you have found this article useful to you or your embroidery business, please leave a comment.  I would really appreciate it!

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In this current ecomomy many businesses are finding it hard to create sales.  I have been hearing from many embroiderers that sales are lagging and they are looking for ways to increase their sales and get their name out there to the public.

As a general rule this time of year is an embroiderer’s busiest time especially for those that do a lot of retail embroidery and personalized single items for Christmas gifts.  There are a three ways that work great to increase immediate sales.

1. Open House or Customer Appreciation Night
2. Home Parties
3. Email Marketing

The first one that we will talk about is the Open House or the “Customer Appreciation Night”.

“Customer Appreciation Night”
An open house is one of the fastest ways to let your customers, friends, and family know that you truly  want to increase your business.  Instead of calling it an open house, call it “Customer Appreciation Night“.  Be creative in putting together your invitations and planning what specials you will have to offer.  Make sure the invitations are the same high quality workmanship as your embroidery.

Let them know that they will receive a free gift just for attending.  Create something embroidered for them to take home. This can be done very inexpensively.  If you are having a Holiday Party theme, you could make some felt ornaments or purchase some inexpensive napkins or even some inexpensive caps.  All of these items should be embroidered with your logo and contact information on it.

The best hours for your “Customer Appreciation Night” are from 4 pm until 7pm.  This will give people a chance to come during business hours or after work which ever works best for them.   Two nights usually work better than one night in case someone that wanted to attend was out of town.

If you have a home business, it can be held off premises.  A small room in a hotel or a meeting you in a club or organization will work for this purpose.

If the Open House is at your place of business, have your machines running.  This is very impressive.  You can be running the items that they are going to be taking home. Seeing the process actually done is very exciting to someone that does not know anything about embroidery.

Serve refreshments, but keep it simple.  You want this to be a fun event for you and the guests.

Have a variety of different samples displayed in an attractive manner and encourage them to ask questions.  Help them to visualize their ideas on a garment or other item.   You could have some gifts baskets made up for  different themes.  You could have one that is for a bridal shower, one for a baby shower, one for a House Warming gift, one for a ladies birthday and even a child’s birthday.  These items are very easy to sell.  The baskets could contain various items but most of all, embroidered products.  An example of products could be for a bridal shower, a bath towel, hand towel and washcloth set along with a roll of embroidered toilet paper and embroidered soap.  They could all have the bridal couples new initials on them.

Have plenty of business cards and brochures for them to take.  Make up a form for them to fill out with all of their contact information on it including their email address. Have a bowl for basket for them to drop this form into.  You can have a drawing for a gift certificate at the end of the evening.

An open house does not have to be expensive to be very effective.  Keep it simple and most of all have fun and make sure that it is an event that your guests will remember.

In my next post I will talk about Home Parties to help bring in  Holiday sales.  If you have some ideas of your own, I would like for you to leave a comment and let me know about them.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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What is Embroidery Push and Pull Compensation? When the  needle penetrates the fabric and the top embroidery thread connects and wraps around the bobbin embroidery thread it locks and creates a pulling in effect.  Most fabrics require that Pull Compensation be added in order to compensate for this push and pull effect brought about when you stitch a design into the fabric.

Do all stitch types require that Pull Compensation be added? All types of stitches create the push-pull effect, but it is most prominent when you are using Satin Path or Complex fill stitches. This push-pull effect is more prominent in large areas of your design such as your complex or tatami fill areas.
You do not add push or pull compensation to the run stitches that you are using for a border.  If your borders do not stay in registration with your fill area, it is best to make your adjustments to the fill area of your design.

Why do my designs look good on the screen but when I sew them out they have gaps?
Your design is created on a flat surface and if you do not compensate for the push and pull effect of your fabric as your design is being stitched out, it will most likely leave gaps where to areas are supposed to come together.  There is a constant tug of war going on between your fabric, machine and thread and you must learn to understand why this tug of war is taking place and how to create the necessary adjustments to your design in order for it to sew out so that it looks good on the fabric after it is sewn.  After you make your necessary adjustments your design may look very distorted on the screen.

Understanding Push and Pull Compensation and how to apply it to your embroidery designs is not hard. I have created a embroidery video training program on a CD with the same information that I taught during my “Embroidery Webinar of the Month,” “Would You Like To Know How To Apply Pull Compensation To Your Embroidery Designs?” During my webinar I taught the basic Push and Pull Compensation settings to apply to knit fabrics, woven fabrics and terry cloth.

I teach you how to take these basic Pull Comp settings and apply them to your other fabrics and different situations. My simple method of teaching will make it easier for you to learn how to make your adjustments as you are creating or digitizing your embroidery designs and daily embroidery lettering setups.

During my webinar I used the Tajima by Pulse DGML embroidery software but you can take these same settings and apply them to your own embroidery software no matter what brand or level you have. Learning how to apply Push and Pull Compensation to your embroidery designs is critical if you want the type of embroidery designs that will make your embroidery business stand out above the crowd.

This embroidery training video program“Learn The Secrets Of How To Create And Apply Pull Comp To Your Embroidery Designs!“ is now available to you on a CD.

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This past weekend I had the opportunity to work at a small trade show in Albany, NY with Ken Chadwick that represented the Stahl’s Products line and Jeff Hajenski that represented embroidery and screen printing machines from Hirsch International.

This was an extremely busy show, especially on Saturday, and I had the privilege of visiting with some of the embroiderers that I had trained and it was really exciting listening to them as they were telling me about their success.

I want to tell you about one in particular. Marjorie Corrow, of Life’s A Stitch Embroidery , a single mom with 2 young daughters has been in business 5 years and grew from a single head embroidery shop…..

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