How to quote a full-back embroidery design (and why it's a range)

Quote a full-back design as a price range for the whole garment, built from your formula at the low and high end of a real back-design stitch count, and confirm the exact price once the design is digitized. In my shop that range runs from 45,000 to 82,000 stitches, which on a hoodie is about $104 to $159 a piece before the one-time setup fee.

A single number is the wrong answer here, and so is sending only the setup fee. This guide covers where the range comes from, the second price I always give alongside it, and how the exact number gets set once the file is back.

Why can't you give one price for a back design?

Because nobody knows the stitch count yet, and on a back design the stitch count is most of the price. I charge $1.50 per 1,000 stitches, so every 10,000 stitches is $15 a garment. On a left chest, a bad guess costs a few dollars. On a back, it can cost $50.

The spread is real. When I measured every back-size design in my own library, the multi-color illustrations ran from 45,962 stitches to 81,981, with most of them between 55,000 and 60,000. Both ends were about 11 inches across. The difference was what the designs were made of. Two-color line art sat at the bottom, and solid brush lettering with lots of color sat at the top.

It also takes real machine time. In Impressions' guide to jacket backs, Steven Batts says a 60,000-stitch design takes an hour and 20 minutes to sew. A customer who has only ever bought a left-chest logo is not expecting that, so the range also tells them what kind of job this is.

Where does the range come from?

Run your normal formula twice, once at the low stitch count and once at the high one. Mine is the blank doubled, $1.50 per 1,000 stitches, $5 for hooping, and a $5 handling fee per product. The full breakdown is in how to price machine embroidery.

Here is a real hoodie. My Gildan 18500 hoodie blank costs me $13.14, so the blank line is $26.28.

At 45,000 stitches, the stitching is $67.50. Add $5 hooping and $5 handling and the hoodie is $103.78.

At 82,000 stitches, the stitching is $123. The hoodie is $159.28.

So the quote says about $104 to $159 a hoodie. The one-time setup fee for the design goes on top. A design that big costs more to set up than a left chest. The setup fee guide explains why mine is $50 for anything over 7.5 inches.

Use your own counts if you have them. If you don't, the stitch count guide shows the square-inch method for estimating one. It also explains why a back is never "the logo, but bigger."

Watch one trap when you build your own numbers from old files. Filter on width and height together, never width alone. An 11-inch wordmark that is 3 inches tall reads as wide, but it is not a back design. My MAMA outline wordmark is 12,712 stitches at that width. Mixing designs like that into your back-design numbers pulls the range down by about half. Then you underquote every back that comes in.

Why I always quote a smaller version too

How big the design is drawn moves the price more than the garment or the colors do. For a filled design, the stitch count follows the area. Shrink the width and the height both shrink, so the count drops by the square of the change. A design 8 inches across has just under half the area of one 11.5 inches across, so a 60,000-stitch back becomes about 29,000.

On the hoodie above, an 8-inch version of the same range is about 22,000 to 40,000 stitches. That works out to about $69 to $96 a hoodie.

So every back-design quote I send carries both numbers. The customer who winced at $159 now has a real choice that is still a back design. I also write "how big the design is" and give the inches across the back. A customer reading "size" on a hoodie quote thinks small, medium, or large.

One exception changes the math. An appliqué design, where fabric covers the big areas instead of thread, follows the width instead of the area. Jimmy Lamb's Impressions article on appliqué calls it a way to cut the stitch count on large designs and notes the fabric, cutting, and applying it adds. My KOHLER varsity appliqué is 19,032 stitches at 11.58 inches across. That is far below a filled design of the same width.

What to say to the customer

Put the setup fee in the same message as the range and the smaller-design price. Then say plainly when the exact number comes. My message reads:

A design that big across the back of a hoodie runs about $104 to $159 each, depending on how much of it is filled with thread. At 8 inches across, it's about $69 to $96. There's a one-time $50 setup fee to get the design ready for my machine. Once the file is done, I'll send you the exact price before anything is stitched!

Never send the setup fee alone. A customer who hears $50 and nothing about the hoodie either walks away or gets a shock when the real number arrives. The range is what makes the setup fee easy to say yes to.

How the exact price gets set

I collect the setup fee first, as its own payment, before I order the digitizing. Then the setup is paid for whether or not the customer goes ahead with the hoodies.

When I send the art to my digitizer, I give a stitch ceiling in writing in the same message: keep this at or under the count I quoted. That number is a design choice, not something I find out later. If the customer picked the 8-inch version at 40,000 stitches, the file comes back at 40,000 or less, so the top of the range is a real top.

Once the file is back, read the exact count out of it. The stitch count guide lists free viewers that show it. Your machine shows it too when you load the design. Price the garment from that number and send it before anything is stitched. The deposits and payment guide covers when the rest of the money comes in.

A stitch file is built for one size. Making a finished design much bigger or smaller means going back to the digitizer. Embroidery Hoop Store's resizing guide limits a PES or DST file to about 10 percent up or down. So settle how big the design is before you order the digitizing, not after.

Where it goes on the shirt

A back design also needs a position. The placement measurements guide has the standard distances from the collar for shirts and jackets, and how I write a placement down so a reorder matches.

Doing this in Broidry

I quote back designs in Broidry. Two settings handle most of it. On the rate card, logo digitizing can be priced by the size of the design. Mine is set to Up to 7.5 inches at $30 and Over 7.5 inches at $50. On the quote, picking Logo under Digitizing opens a Size of the design menu. The customer's quote then reads "Design digitizing, over 7.5 inches (one-time)."

The quote builder also has a switch called What this quote covers. Digitizing only charges the setup fee and nothing else. The customer's quote page says a second quote for the pieces is coming. When the file is back, I drop it into the design's record and the stitch count fills in on its own. Then I press Edit quote, put the switch on The whole order, and price the pieces from the real count. What the customer already paid for setup comes off the total, so nobody pays it twice. There is a free plan with 15 orders a month.

The short version

Price a full back at the low and high end of a real back-design stitch count. Mine is 45,000 to 82,000, which is about $104 to $159 on a hoodie. Give the customer a smaller-design price in the same message, plus the setup fee. Collect the setup fee first. Give your digitizer a stitch ceiling in writing. Send the exact price from the finished file before anything is stitched. If you want the math done for you, the free embroidery pricing calculator will price each end of the range. Run it once at each stitch count.