GraphicsFlow Customer Spotlight: Embroidery Designs
11 March, 2022
Bottom Line Up Front: New York-based Embroidery Designs used GraphicsFlow to tackle a job for a major university’s athletic department and efficiently track all feedback from the department with Art Approvals.
Creating designs and communicating with customers is a core part of how all custom branded merch businesses operate. For Embroidery Designs, any tools that can speed up and streamline those processes are crucial. Based in New York state’s scenic Hudson Valley, Embroidery Designs is a family-owned and operated business.
The company’s roots date back to 1993 when Vicki Dunning began offering high-quality embroidery services to local customers as an at-home business. As the business’s local reputation grew over the years, jobs started coming in quicker, and Vicki’s husband, Dennis Dunning, stepped in to help out. Around 2003, Dennis retired from his full-time job to co-operate the business, and the Dunnings continued to grow their services.
“Over the years, we picked up more machines and became more proficient with software,” says Dennis. He took a particular interest in digitizing for embroidery, something he’s still very heavily involved in at the business as he’s honed his craft over the years.
Today, Embroidery Designs offers more than just embroidered goods. The business prints heat transfer vinyl and signage and offer screen printing as an outsourced service. Dennis says initially, the shop focused mainly on embroidery. But as customers started asking for different services, he felt it was essential to give them what they wanted.
He explains that the shop was reluctant to turn people away for one service since that embroidery customer who needed screen printing could just as quickly turn to a competitor who offers everything under one roof. And, Dennis says rather than spend countless dollars on advertising, he and Vicki would instead let the top quality of their work speak for itself. The company gets most of its business from referrals and local customers who track them down via Google.
Along with local word-of-mouth reputation, Dennis says he occasionally gets inquiries thanks to his YouTube channel. One of his specialties is puff embroidery on hats, which he’s had people reach out to him after watching some of his videos.
The business also does some regional and international work, printing merchandise for car clubs with a global presence. That includes orders in Canada, Hawaii, and even Australia.
Tackling a Complicated Job
Dennis says one of the more recent challenging jobs the shop had was last fall when a major university approached them with a tall order. The school asked Embroidery Designs to create the designs and print merch for the college’s entire athletic department. Having GraphicsFlow as part of his tools came in extremely handy. Because the request covered the whole athletic department for the school, there were nearly 19 different coaches involved in the process, which could get messy fast. And, because the school had very specific branding and color scheme guidelines, the Dunnings needed a way to keep all of the work consistent and organized.
“That’s when Vicki and I said to ourselves, ‘GraphicsFlow would be an excellent way to share a link illustrating combinations of the logo, text, and various colors,” says Dennis.
With GraphicsFlow’s Art Approvals, Dennis quickly generated several mockups for the school and relayed them to the team member in charge of managing all of the requests for the department. He says this made communication much smoother between the shop and the fleet of nearly 20 coaches at the university. The visual component of the Art Approvals made changes much simpler to communicate with the school.
“It’s hard to explain the changes you’re going to make on design to people, but you show them a picture, and you say, ‘this is what we can do for you’,” says Dennis.
Once the customer understood his concept behind the graphic, he’d send over a link for approval, including separate mockups for embroidery and imprinting since the school needed different types of garments and accessories decorated.
Staying Busy
While Embroidery Designs has a healthy stack of job orders every week thanks to its local reputation and Dennis’s knack for digitizing, he says GraphicsFlow has helped him improve parts of his workflow.
“We chose GraphicsFlow because the people who developed and support it understand the apparel decoration business, and we have confidence in them,” he explains.
Before using GraphicsFlow, the business mostly used emails and attachment files for approvals. That process quickly got overwhelming if a job had more than two or three changes and several people on the email chain. Dennis says he uses the art library in GraphicsFlow as a starting point for several designs. Since the files are built for production, he’s able to pull a design that fits the category or client he’s designing for. After that, he’ll add his own personal touches, and knows that once the customer approves the design, he’ll be able to go straight to production without reworking the image since it’s optimized for printing or embroidery.
He’s since used the GraphicsFlow art catalog for other jobs like a local fire department who needed a fresh design for their T-shirts. And, an area summer camp that wanted merchandise for their upcoming season. The summer camp, Dennis says, originally sent him their own artwork, which wasn’t the easiest to work with. Thankfully, he built an alternative option through GraphicsFlow and created something that both parties were happy with.
“GraphicsFlow gave me suitable alternatives that I could turn into production files and print easier,” he states. “If you can offer something that’s unique, and get a customer to comment on it, then you have them buying into the process.”
Tying it All Together
Embroidery Designs has also used GraphicsFlow for sign design and graphics for heat transfer vinyl, thanks to the production-ready nature of the catalog. In short, Dennis says using the program enables him to offer something that other shops don’t, helping him stay ahead of the competition. He qualifies Embroidery Design as a “mom-and-pop,” but he says he’s happy with the volume the business has seen over the years.
“I don’t want to print thousands and thousands of items,” he stresses. “We’re doing this because we believe our products are our best advertising.”
Ready to offer the ultimate online experience for your customers with Art Portal and GraphicsFlow? Contact a Client Advisor today for a personalized tour. Fifteen minutes can change your business.
