Design Pathing

One aspect of digitizing that is often ignored, especially by beginning digitizers is pathing. Pathing is the mapping out of the stitching order of the various different objects that make up your final digitized design. There are many different reasons for planning out the sewing order in advance, which include the amount of jumps and trims, the overall sewing time, and potential machine risks which can result from a poorly planned design.
Minimising color changes
Every color change that you place in your designs adds time to the overall sewing time of the design. To change from one color to another the machine must first stop and trim and then the head has to slide to the next desired color and then when the machine begins sewing again it first starts slowly to avoid the thread from pulling out of the needle and then it resumes sewing at full speed. So for every extra color change you place in your design you are adding approximately 7 seconds to the overall sewing time, or if you place 10 extra color changes you are adding 70 seconds, and if you run that design 10 times on a six head machine you are adding 60 X 70 seconds or 70 minutes. So you may not think an extra color change here or the matters too much but at the end of a day of production it can have a huge effect.
Trims and jumps
Both trims and jumps also cause the machine to stop and slow down, often times especially if you are relying on auto digitizing to create your designs the frequency these two commands id overlooked, but if you take the time to look at the sewing sequence of your design either before on your computer or while it is sewing out you can easily devise a plan for either reducing their occurrence or eliminating them all together.
Sewing time
Keeping an eye on all of these factors can greatly increase the efficiency of all of your designs.
Production Issues
The last issue that I would like to address is that of wear and tear on your embroidery machine. Trimmers, color change mechanics and jump stitch solenoids are all mechanical parts which with repeated and frequent use can become overheated and as a result fail well before their expected lifespan. If you trim twice with less than 40 stitches between the trims you are not giving the machine a chance to cool down between operations, if you do this constantly you will most definitely damage the machine. so it is important to plan out your design before you begin to digitize. A good example of this is a Field of polka dots with a fill background. If you digitize the fill first and jump and trim from polka dot to polka dote you stand the risk of damaging you trimmers, but if you digitize the polka dots first and place a fill with voids on top of it you can omit the trims entirely.
If you plan out you designs before you digitize them you can save both running time and excess wear and tear on your equipment. Your run time will be quicker and your machine will last longer.

Building your customer Base

A major concern for all business owners is getting and keeping new customers, in our current economic climate it has become pretty much essential.
Website
Just about every business has a website, if you don't you should, but creating and hosting a website are just the first step. You then need to drive traffic to it. Make sure that your website is mentioned in everything that you do. Invoices, business cards, stationary, advertising, press releases and listings all need to include your web address.
Blog
Hosting a blog gives your current and prospective customers a place to go to see what your company is doing and any specials you are offering. Make sure that you include helpful and informative information that is going to be beneficial to your customers, so that they have a reason for returning on a regular basis. if you don't add new material on a daily basis then make sure it is added at the same time every week or month so they get into the habit of checking it at those intervals.
Newsletter
A great way to remind you customers to visit both your website and blog is a weekly newsletter, this will assure that your customers get weekly reminders to either visit your shop, website or to even call you to follow up on specials or new products.
Cold Calling
The most time intensive forms of customer connection is cold calling, but it offers the biggest return for the time invested and it opens up a two way dialog with your customers, which is a great way to make sure you have a good feel for your customers needs.
Specials, new Products and Incentives
While we have all cut our costs and our prices to the bare bones, making sales and discounts close to impossible in many cases, there is always some inventory that we need to move regardless of the price, even if we just break even. Use that product to get customers to contact you, and while you have their attention bring up your new products and embellishment techniques.
Networking
Don't forget to bring your business cards wherever you go, remember everyone needs embroidery or some kind of embellishment at one time or another, use your card to remind them to contact you when they do.
Getting Involved
Get involved with your community schools, businesses, fund raisers, library, fairs and any other social events, these are the places, events, and organizations that use and need personalization.

File Formats

KPD Compositions allows to to output your designs in over 32 different file formats, which include both home embroidery and commercial embroidery file types. With all of these formats to choose from there is virtually no customer for which you are unable to produce designs. When shopping for software make sure that you start by listing all of your needs and as you view the many choices out there check off all of the feature on your list one by one.

Fabric Facts

To understand the impact embroidery is going to have on the products upon which you are placing it, you first need to understand how the various different fabrics affect the designs you are embroidering on them.
Woven Versus Knit
Knits stretch and because of that they require a stable backing and enough underlay to connect the fabric to that backing so that the knit can't move during the embroidery process and in doing so, cause the design to become distorted. Woven fabrics are a lot more forgiving, they only stretch on the bias, so if they are firmly hooped and have a minimum of underlay and a sufficent backing, you should not have to worry about design distortion.
Needles
The size of your needle should relate to the weight of your fabric, a heavy weight fabric such as canvas or denim requires a larger needle. for fine fabrics you want to use a small needle for example, a 65/9 or a 70/10 as a smaller needle will make a smaller hole and do less damage to the fabric.
The point of the needle is chosen by the fabric, ballpoint for knits and sharp for woven fabrics. Ballpoint needles will push the fibers of the knit aside so that they aren't broken in the embroidery process which would cause the knit to run. Sharp needles are best for woven fabrics because they cause the least amount of friction as they pierce the fabric and make the cleanest perferation, helping to keep your lines crisp.
If you are embroidering on a fabric with a texture, whether it is knit or woven underlay is essential for flattening out the fabric so that the embroidery is not lost in the indentations or overemphasized in the raised areas. Fabric with a definite pattern such as twill or pique require a running stich underlay along the edge of the columns to keep them from following the grain of the fabric.
Each fabric has different needs once you understand how to inherent differences of
the array of goods you embroidery you will understand how to overcome them.