Ideas on charging for embroidery work?

[esrun3]

Most of my machine embroidery I do fro minimal, if any, cost for my family and friends. I have had people at work ask me to do some jobs for them and am wondering how to charge. I'm not looking to get rich but would like to cover my costs and don't really even know how to figure that out as far as thread, needles, stabilizer, etc go.

Any ideas would be much appreciated

[pucktricks]

I haven't gotten much work done, but I've talked with my neighbor who has gotten a lot of work done, and her comment was it ran $5-7 for the embroideries. She was usually doing a team logo and a monogram of some sort. I had quite an amusing time listening to her complain about the price, and I used to think the same thing, but after seeing all of the expense involved I can understand it costing about that much.

Ticia

[paroper]

I usually charge $5 per hooping to cover the cost of thread, stabilizer, wear and tear on the machine, etc. When you consider the price of stabilizer and thread (all of which must be replaced), that isn't so bad. Then I charge $1 per thousand for the stitches. Now, when you get into really dense designs, this gets expensive, so you need to carefully consider the cost...but it is really quite reasonable. Some charge 1.50 per 1000 stitches. Unless the design is unusually cheap, I drop the odd number of stitches. I do put the design in the computer though and give the requestor a heads up before I begin. People think 1000 stitches sounds like a lot of stitches but I've found that even a simple name will often be 13,000 plus stitches.

[esrun3]

Thanks Pam and Ticia. I was kind of leaning toward that pricing at least as a jump off point. I;m assuming you would charge for the article being embroidered on or the customer would provide it, right?

[paroper]

I've always had the customer provide their own materials, well, as far as items to embroider upon. It is not so reasonable for them to provide thread and stabilizer and designs (just need to make sure they are designs from which you can receive profit.)

I haven't checked the taxations rules and they may be much different from when I was doing it and if you are in another state. At the time that I was doing sewing for people, if I did NOT provide the raw materials, it was considered a service. I did not have to collect and pay SALES taxes on this. If I was buying and selling the finished product, that put it in a whole other catagory...and I would have to have a Fed tax ID and collect sales taxes. Now, with either process, I had to pay taxes on the gain, but I didn't have to pay sales taxes every month. I found it much easier to operate as a service. As a sewing service, I was not effected by local zoning regulations either. Again, in your area and at this place and time, those rules might have changed...it has been about 10 years since I had my business...and things do change a lot so this is something that would bear checking.

[MartySews2]

When I sewed for the public, I had a flat fee per item. For most embroideries I charged $25 per design which covered my time & materials. It was very simple to calculate. If someone wanted 3 roses on the bottom of a gown, it was $75. Not only do you have to think about the stabilizers, thread, wear & tear on your machine but you need to calculate time spent figuring out where to place the design, hooping, test design, replacement, expertise, etc. A lot of people fail to figure in the small details when doing sewing for others.
Marty