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A black crewneck embroidered with a company name repeated five times across the back.

What a custom order costs, and why I will not guess

Sep 13, 2026

Forty hats, your logo on the front, and a date you cannot move. Before you send that email you would like to know roughly what the number looks like. Every other embroidery site will hand you a range. I am not going to, and I would rather tell you why than let you find out at the quote.

Here is everything that moves the number, so you can see your own job inside it.

1. Who is buying the blank

If I source the hat or the crewneck, the cost of that blank is in my quote. If you already have the pieces, or you want a brand I do not stock, you send them to me and you are paying for stitching only. Those are two very different numbers for the exact same design, and it is usually the first thing I ask.

2. What it is going on

A hat, a tee, a tote, and a blanket are four different blanks at four different costs, and they take different amounts of time on the machine. A blanket is not a big hat. It is its own job.

3. How many places the stitching goes

A design on the front of a hat is one hooping. That same design on the front, with a number on the side panel and something across the back, is three hoopings, three setups, and three chances to line it up by hand. Placements multiply the work more than anyone expects. This is the one that catches people.

4. How much stitching is actually in the design

A machine charges in stitches, not in inches. A clean two color wordmark might be six thousand stitches. A dense illustration with a filled background, the same size on the same hat, might be twenty five thousand. Four times the machine time and four times the thread, for a design taking up the same amount of room. Simplify it and the price comes down with it, which is one reason I always offer to.

5. The stitch file, once

A machine cannot read a picture. Your artwork has to be converted into a stitch file first: every needle drop, every thread change, every bit of underlay, mapped out in order. How complicated your artwork is decides what that costs, which is exactly why I will not put a number on it before I have seen the file. It is a one time fee I pass straight through to you at cost, it happens on the first order only, and every reorder after that skips it forever.

6. How many

This one moves the most. Hooping, threading up, and color changes are roughly the same work whether I run one or fifty. Spread across fifty, the per piece price drops a lot. It is why a run of forty costs less per hat than a run of four.

So what can you count on

The designs already on the site have their prices printed on them right now, and those do not move. Custom is quoted every time, because any range I published would be wrong for most of the people reading it. A wrong range is worse than no range. You build a budget on it, and then I have to take it away.

How to get a real number, usually within a day

  1. Send me the artwork, or a photo of it, or a screenshot. Rough is fine.
  2. Tell me what it is going on, how many, and whether you have the blanks or you want me to source them.
  3. Say where you want the stitching. Front only is the common one.
  4. Give me your date, if you have one.

That is enough to work from. I come back with a mockup, a per piece price, and a ship date. Nothing goes on a machine until you have seen it and said yes.

How the money moves on a business run

You approve the mockup, I invoice half up front and stitch the run, and the other half is due when it is boxed and ready to ship. Most runs ship one to two weeks from the day you approve. If you need it sooner, say so when you send the logo. A rush is usually possible for a fee, and you will get the real date before you pay a deposit.

What you are actually buying

Your piece gets hooped by hand, run on a multi needle machine in my Colorado studio, trimmed, checked against the mockup, and boxed by the same person who hooped it. That is me. There is no middle step where it gets sent somewhere and comes back.

That is why the reorder is easy, why I can catch a thread break while it is happening, and why you can send me a change on a Tuesday and have it in the mockup that night.

Send me the logo and a count, or start a one off custom piece.

Sal