Emergency Stitch Count Estimating

Yes, that is correct there could even be “emergencies” when selling embroidery.  In our industry most embroidery shops and digitizers price their services based on the stitch counts of the designs you order.   For embroiderers this is because the machines can only sew so fast, so the higher the stitch count the more time it takes for them to complete the order. The number of stitches is directly related to how much time it takes to sew.  Since time is money, the more time it takes the more you are going to pay to make up for that time.    The same concept usually applies to digitizing fees as well.  The higher the stitch count the more the design will cost to set up.  The difference is that depending on the skill level of the digitizer and the software they use a design that has more stitches does not necessarily mean that it took longer to digitize. This is why you see more digitizers are pricing by degree of difficulty or have flat rate pricing instead of basing fees on stitch counts.  So either because of the embroiderer or the digitizer or both, you are going to need to know the stitch counts of your clients’ orders to allow you to price effectively for your own margins.

Many digitizing companies offer free estimating services and providing quotes within an hour or so is pretty common.  But what do you do if you are in the middle of a sales call and want to quote on the fly?  Either you can price the digitizing and embroidery fees high enough to cover most designs or you can learn some basic estimating skills to allow you to possibly price your services more aggressively and effectively.

When looking at a design there are really only three types of areas that you need to consider.  There are blocks of colored areas that we would call: “fills” or “steps”.  There are areas that use “satin” or “column” stitches such as most lettering or borders wider than 1mm.  And finally there are detail stitches that we call:  “running” or sometimes a variation called “bean” stitches.  These would be used for outlining small items with widths less than 1mm or simply to walk from one part of a design to another.  In general, and to help you in a pinch, a square inch of a solid block of color will have roughly 1250 stitches of “fill”.  A linear inch of a “satin” will have 200 stitches while a linear inch of “running” will have 50 stitches.  Lettering is easy enough to add to the equation.  Standard block without serifs at ¼ inch tall will have roughly 100 stitches per letter with ½ lettering being double that.  If the font is a serif type then you can count on 125 stitches per ¼ inch letter and then 250 stitches for a ½ inch one.

Let us visualize the Ford oval logo at 3.5 inches wide and try to estimate the number of stitches.  The oval is a solid area of blue which would be converted to “fill” stitches in thread.  If the design is 3.5 inches wide then it is about 1.25 inches tall making the filled area about 5000 stitches.  Around the outer edge are two ovals in “satin” stitches, one in blue and the other in white, each about 7 inches in length if laid flat which adds up to 1400 stitches per for a total of 2800.  The lettering is ¾ of an inch tall with no serifs so that would mean 300 stitches per letter for a letter total of 1200 stitches.  The entire logo at a 3.5 inch wide size would have roughly 9000 stitches.  If your client did not want to pay for a 9000 stitch logo it is a simple matter of basic algebra to convert the design to a size that would have the corresponding stitch count that is affordable to them.  If, for example, they only wanted 7000 stitches, then 3.5 is to 9000 as X is to 7000 for a result of nearly 2 ¾ .  So a 2.75 inch wide Ford logo would get you to the 7000 stitches the client is willing to pay for.

This may sound complicated, but with a little practice this is really easy to do.  Take some time and review designs that you have already purchased.  Look at them and try to figure out the stitch counts.  Once you have done the math look up the files and see how your estimates compare with what they actually came to.  You will find that even though two people looking at the same design might envision it done differently with different stitches or patterns, that on average your estimates will be pretty accurate nevertheless.  If you can master estimating stitch counts then this should enable you to be faster in the field at closing your embroidery sales.  If you can do that, then you can sell more and that would be the best possible reason for writing these articles… to help you sell more!