Travel Bag Logo

Travel Bag Logo
Any idea where I can get a logo put on a duffel bag? (I only need one. Most places have higher minimums.)?

I'm trying to come up with a cool Christmas gift for my sister. She has her own business and travels a lot, so I'd love to have a carry-on duffel bag made with her logo on it. But I only need one. Any ideas on sites that don't have a minimum?

Thanks!
A rolling duffel would be nice, but realistically I can't swing more than about $100.

Find a local shop that will do only one of them. Even then, you will hear the same rap about minimums. There is no physical reason they can't do just one, but the technical reason is that the cost of all of the setups are so high that they can't price the item high enough to make an actual profit. They might need $150 for just one item and you won't think a $25 bag is worth that much. (Perceived value)

A logo or design for embroidery has to be digitized. A human has to sit at a computer and manually put dots everywhere the needle will stab. (There is some degree of automation to this, but it is primarily labor intensive.)

Now depending on your logo, they have to load up all of the thread colors and get them fed through the machine.

They probably have to do a test sew out before they run yours.

Now they wait for your job to run. This could take a few minutes or 15 minutes. It all depends on how many stitches.

If they only have a 12 head machine, then the other 11 just sat there doing nothing while your 1 job ran, so your job has to cost enough to replace all of the opportunity cost that went by during that time frame. If it is a 1 head machine, it still ties up one person for that time.

Embroidery is a low margin cut throat industry, so full capacity matters a lot.

With tiny scissors, somebody clips threads from the design to clean up where the needle had to travel long distance to get to a different part of your design.

All this is the justification for the high minimums. It spreads this high setup cost across a lot of units, but it also makes for efficient utilization of the machine which is the backbone and the pulse of the business.

Digitizing can run $65-$85 or more. (It really depends on your art) Run charges can be $10 for one unit. The item itself may cost $25-35.

If you do find a shop, they are probably more apt to do it if you buy the item from them. They get that money, but also, the stuff they sell is designed to be decorated. The stuff sold at retail stores is not made with that in mind. It often doesn't have the amount of space or special pockets or the required things that make it possible for embellishers to decorate them.

A web site probably can't do this most likely because they are a general contractor that hires out the embroidery to a shop that does embroidery. You need to find a small shop that does the work in-house.

The drawback is that a lot of these places do mediocre work. There are a lot of aspects to making it right. Thread tension, hooping, backing, speed, age of thread, composition of thread, maybe humidity, and who knows what else. Only the top couple percent of shops achieve this level of quality and control.

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