Hone your embroidery: price the stitch count, keep the margin
Stitch count is the whole game. Thread, run-time, and wear all follow it.
Two shirts can cost wildly different amounts to embroider on the same blank, because one logo is 6,000 stitches and the other is 30,000. Here is how to price the stitches, not the shirt.
Where the margin leaks
The pricing traps that quietly cost makers money.
Pricing per item, not per stitch
A dense logo costs far more in thread, run-time, and wear than a light one on the same shirt. Price the stitch count.
Eating digitizing time
Turning art into a stitch file is real one-time work. Bill it as a setup line, not buried in the first order.
Forgetting thread, stabilizer, breaks
Thread, bobbin, backing, and the re-thread when it snaps. Per-item small, constant across a run.
Where the money is
The levers that actually move your take-home.
Run multi-needle or multi-head
More heads stitch more pieces per run. Machine time per piece drops hard on a batch.
Amortize digitizing over the run
A 100-shirt order spreads the one-time digitizing to pennies each. Price the setup once, win the volume.
Lower the stitch count where it reads
A cleaner design with fewer stitches sews faster and uses less thread, if it still looks sharp.
What to track
The few numbers worth watching.
Stitch count
The master input. Thread, time, and wear all follow it.
Machine hours
Stitches divided by speed. The line that meters electricity and depreciation.
Setup recovered
Whether the digitizing line actually got billed. The easiest money to leave on the table.
Set Anvil up for it
How to make Anvil price your craft the honest way.
Enter the real stitch count
Off the digitized file. Anvil derives thread and run-time from it.
Set machine speed and power
So the run-time and electricity match your actual machine.
Bill digitizing once
A one-time line on the first order; the file is reusable after.
Know your craft.
The cost engine is free. Put your real numbers in and see what to charge.