Decoration Diaries: A Distributor Goes the Extra Mile on an Embroidery Order

Jamie S. Young has experienced a natural progression and growth of the business she started about two years ago. Jamie Young Swag & Strategy, Battle Ground, Wash., rebranded from AttaGIRL PROMOtions in December, began offering custom gift marketing strategies at the start of 2020 and established an in-house screen printing shop with a manual, four-station screen printer last month.

With apparel orders increasing in 2020, Young opted to make the move to bring screen printing in house. While she’ll continue to outsource embroidery orders, she hopes to increase her profit margins on screen printing orders moving forward.

“I try to pay attention [to] what the market wants from me and serve in [any] way that they need me,” Young said.

Keep reading as Young tells us how an embroidery project almost went south after switching contract decorators for a reorder. Young vowed to stick to her original source going forward for this particular project, but here’s how she stepped in to keep her client happy.

A stock photo of an embroidered jacket. | Credit: Getty Images by knape

The client’s need: My occupational health client wanted a specific high-end jacket with very classy, low-key embroidery. I met a new-to-me decorator at a trade show and sourced the job through them. Nothing special until the current situation. During the reorder, I tried to source the job to a local decorator who could not match—or wasn't willing to match or order in [the] correct thread color. [Little] did I realize [I need] to keep working with decorators who do a great job. They really are worth sticking with.

The execution: Nothing complex—just logistics.

The obstacles: Yes, matching thread color to the logo PMS color—the local decorator did a poor job and wasn't looking [to] find solutions. [The] industry pro I worked with previously was willing to go the long haul to get it done right the first time and wasn't having me run around town finding embroidery thread that matched. In my [opinion], that's their job, not mine.

The outcome & advice: They loved it—only because I made sure we were not settling for the wrong thread color.

For details on how to participate in a future edition of Decoration Diaries and share your apparel decoration project success, email Amanda Cole at acole@napco.com. Click here to read more Decoration Diaries, or click here to download "The Promo Distributor's Guide to Apparel Decoration," a free resource from Promo Marketing.