So, all this time, you have been focusing on increasing your customer base for getting more profits. This is what all businesses essentially strive for; gaining more customers to increase their revenues. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this mindset, it is unwise of any business owner to get stuck with a particular mindset. The main goal is to increase revenues but what if only seeking more custom embroidery customers wasn’t the only way of going about it?

There is a better way around it. You can increase your net profit margins significantly by simply up-selling to your existing customers. After all, acquiring new customers is way more expensive and laborious than retaining your existing customers.

Think about it. You are not spending extra money on marketing your machine embroidery business. You are not buying extra supplies or hiring new employees and are still making more profits on your custom embroidery orders. Isn’t that great? In this blog post, we will let you know how to exactly do that.

Offer Embroidery On Multiple Locations:

When a customer approaches you for custom embroidery, try up-selling them by offering embroidery on multiple locations. If it’s a T-shirt, offer them embroidery on sleeves or on the back side rather than just on the left chest. More custom embroidery means more profits for you without any significant additional effort involved.

T-shirt Embroidery

The key here is the way you approach your customers. You don’t want to sound ‘salesy’ through the process. Make sure that you listen to your customer thoroughly before pitching. Once they are finished, coax them into convincing that more custom embroidery designs will make their apparel look even better and for this purpose you are providing the best embroidery digitizing service too. Or how enlarging the design will do justice to the design. Either way, you are bagging more profits from the same customer and order.

It is important to remind yourself that you are not ruining customer’s order only for the sake your profit. Give design advice that will really add towards making their product look great. You might make some extra dollars on this deal but it is likely that the customer is never coming back again. Losing your trust and integrity for short term profits in business is devastating.

Related: How To Grow Machine Embroidery Business Through Customer Trust


Use Special Threads:

metallic thread design in custom designs

Using special threads in your embroidery designs greatly enhances the aesthetics. If you know, how to properly handle a special thread, you are going places with winning over your customers. Not only special thread designs are going to win you, happy customers, they are also going to make you higher profits on the same embroidery.

it is a pretty simple up-sell but most machine embroiderers will simply shun away from this. don’t do this. Instead, learn and practice embroidering with a particular thread.  This way you will gain customer trust, competitive advantage, and obviously higher profit margins.

The most common special thread is the metallic thread. There are issues around using it but it is no good enough reason for avoiding them. These issues are easily avoidable by taking proper measures. Especially, if you can make higher profits out of them.

Related: Embroidering Better Machine Embroidery Designs With Metallic Thread

Offer More Products:

multiple custom embroidered products

In many cases, the opportunity to up-sell with additional designs will not be there. Since we are strictly talking about custom embroidery, a large chunk of this industry comprises of corporate branding apparels. Here, up-selling with more designs is not possible.

What do you do then?

Simply offer your customers more products. If they have come to you for a left chest logo on polo shirts, up-sell by offering them custom embroidered hats. If a soccer team is there for embroidered shirts, offer them embroidered jackets as well.Make sure that you actually have the capacity and ability to embroider on additional products that you will offer.

It is a common trap to fall in that if customers will need a thing, they will let you know. It is actually naive to think this way. ‘Need’ is not the only stimulant when it comes to buying decisions. In fact, buying decisions are triggered due to multiple emotional (example: T-shirts with pup designs) and financial (example: promotional discounts) reasons. Come out of this trap that if they don’t need it, they won’t buy it.

As a  matter of fact, many customers will not even know that you are offering these items. So, tap on this vital up-selling opportunity.

Introduce Embroidered Patches:

embroidered patch on a shirt

Embroidery patches are now no more detested. They are not only acceptable but are even trendy. It is because they are not merely identity or name tags.  Embroidered patches, if done rightly, are specifically a great up-sell to offer for organizational custom embroidery.

Like always, you will not shove your ‘suggestions’ to the throats, of your customers. Try convincing them that how an embroidered patch will help them in pulling off the desired professional look.

What remains constant throughout your up-selling saga is evaluating your customer, their needs, their preferences and then coming up with a suitable up-sell option. You can’t just offer same up-sells to every customer.

What do you think about these up-selling hacks? Do you already use any of these or got some other? Let us know in the comment section.

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