Images Magazine November 18

KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT www.images-magazine.com 44 images NOVEMBER 2018 Recently, prosumer machines have been popping up in what many would call professional settings as they are increasingly used for personalisation in gift shops or packed in trailers for mobile or event embroidery, and are favourites in pop-up retail decoration kiosks that have become popular in higher- end clothing stores. For long-time decorators, the greatest surprise is that they are increasingly seen on the stands at commercial trade shows, where the increase of home-based producers seeking professional equipment and supplies has found traditionally commercial manufacturers creating models that seem to be positioned for the high end of the ‘prosumer’ market. For full-time production, difficult substrates and cap decoration, it’s hard to recommend anything but a commercial unit, but despite the obvious limitations – whether describing the number of colours on a head, the slower production speeds or the overall smaller decoration fields – some primarily commercial producers praise the prosumer equipment due to a higher availability of service and support outlets, the inclusion of features meant to simplify operation and the extreme portability of the equipment. Expansion: modular versus multi-head All decoration shops with a sufficient amount of growth will eventually have to expand their capacity if they want to maintain production in-house. The pressing question then is whether one should add a multi-head machine or continue with single- head offerings, particularly if your chosen brand allows for direct control to create a [networked] modular multi-head system from the individual units. The truth is, both have qualities that recommend them as well as their own drawbacks; the choice is largely based on what your budget and your business model can handle. The benefit of both methods is clear: more needles moving simultaneously means more billable work completed in a day. The differences lie in efficiency, versatility and cost. Multi-heads are the model of efficiency – with all heads controlled by a single head unit, you can thread up, load a single design, mount the garments at all stations and hit start. No selecting individual machines for tasks, no manually running between non-networked single-heads loading files and starting machines, no extra work required to get multiple pieces per run aside from the unavoidable threading and hooping. Moreover, multi- heads can be set up to run a design and then selectively run custom text or elements after producing the collective design by turning individual heads on and off. Networked single-heads can be similarly addressed with files, but some models require individual control of each unit to start each run. Networked single- head set-ups, however, are supremely versatile: not only can you run multiple garments with the same design in the fashion of a multi-head, you can selectively split the units between jobs or reassign units mid-shift to address multiple jobs with entirely different designs, even switching only a portion of your fleet to caps while the rest run tubular embroidery. This is entirely out of the reach of a dedicated multi-head unless you have multiple machines, and even then, full run counts are fixed at the head count per machine. Cost is a major differentiator: It may have to be hoisted through a purpose-made opening Multi-heads, where all heads are controlled by a single unit, are the “model of efficiency“ Networked heads may cost more than multi-heads but offer greater versatility