Larry, Different people use different pricing structures. It depends on your costs (overhead). I have low overhead working out of my home and having most my machines paid off, however, this doesn't mean I should sell them dirt cheap and work for nothing either. Normally I add 50% onto what I pay for merchandise. If it costs $10, I sell it for $15 plus logo. As far as embroidery most people charge $1 per 1000 stitches. I price mine between $0.50 - $0.75 per 1000. I am told my prices are too low (even by my customers) but I make a fair living and am happy doing what I do. Most people would charge 100% markup. So if you have shirts that cost you $10 you would charge $20 for the shirt and at 4.5k stitches $4.50 for the embroidery for a total of $24.50 per shirt. If I were to go that high I would be priced out by 2 companies in town so I have to keep my prices in order to stay competitive. Maybe this will at least give you an idea, but you need to figure out for yourself what you need to mark things up to survive. As far as the caps go. A structured cap has buckram and stands up on its own. A unstructured cap has no buckrum and is floppy. The leaning back is not necessarily structured or unstructured part of the cap. The caps that lean back (if you are talking about the same thing I think you are) are a real pain to sew on and are next to impossible to get looking real good. For best results on a cap you need to setup the logo to sew center out and bottom to top whenever possible. I am not sure if you are digitizing yourself and if so how much experience you have or if you are having it done by someone else. If someone else is digitizing for you be sure to tell them they are digitizing the design for caps if that is the case. Most of the hats now have pre-curved bills. I have the best results if I uncurve the cap before putting it on the machine. Another trick is if you have a heated cap press you can get the cap warm first which will soften the fabric and structured caps will sew as well as unstructured caps. I have done this on a few occasions for problem caps and it works great. I do not have the time to always do this however and most people can't justify the expense of a cap press. I use hooptech cap frames rather than the 270 frames that come with the machine. I have been using these for 4 or 5 years now and think they sew way better than the 270 frames. I have spend the last few years learning as much as possible about how to sew caps better and my caps are 50x better now than they were several years ago. Not sure if any of this will help your situation. If you ever have any questions and would like to give me a call feel free to do so. I can be reached at 1-888-494-9035. My hours are normally M-F 9-5 PST, but I have been working Sat and later in the evenings lately (probably til Christmas). Aaron Sargent The Linen Barn linen@xxxxxxxxxxx Medford, OR ----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry Butler" <ice_man@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <Amayausers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 4:15 PM Subject: [amayausers] 2 more simple questions I have just finished an order of 14 dozen shirts and I am not sure how to price the work. These shirts have a total of 4,500 stitches per shirt and then another dozen that had 10,200 stitches. How should these be priced and do you add anything to the base price of the shirts since I had to purchase them from a supplier? Second question has to do with hats the registration seems to be bad, not real bad to the person that don't care but to me I think it will drive me nuts if I have to live with this quality. These hats are not structured, that is to say they curve back fairly hard at the top. What can I do? I am open to any suggestions at this time. Thanks for the help Larry Butler ice_man@xxxxxxxxxxxxx --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: amayausers-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: amayausers-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx