Your first sale, from zero

This guide is for the embroiderer who has the machine, knows their way around a hoop and stabilizer, and has never sold a single piece. No customers, no prices, no order history. That is not a problem to fix before you start — it is exactly where every shop starts, and Broidry does not need any history to work.

You do not need a full product line either. One product with one price is a real shop. Everything below gets you to that shop, and then walks you through a practice order so the first real one is not also your first time seeing how ordering works.

Set up one product

A product on your shop page is the thing a customer can order: a name, a price, and ideally a photo. Pick the one thing you already stitch well and would be happy to make again — a name on a sweatshirt, a monogrammed tote, a personalized beanie.

1. 1Create your account and choose I'm an embroiderer. Broidry opens your dashboard.
2. 2Open Products and add your product. Give it a plain name a stranger would search for, like Embroidered name sweatshirt, not an in-joke.
3. 3Add a photo if you have one. A photo of a piece you made for yourself or a friend works fine. A product without a photo still works, but photos sell.
4. 4Set one price. The next section helps you pick it, and you can change it any time — a price on your shop page is never a promise you are stuck with.
5. 5Open your own shop page and look at the product the way a customer would. If the description feels thin, look at a real working shop for reference: the example shop at broidry.com/s/four-burners is a real embroidery business, and reading how it names and describes its products is the fastest way to see what good looks like.

What should I charge?

An embroidery price has three honest parts. First, what the garment cost you — the blank, meaning the plain unstitched sweatshirt or tote you buy to embroider on. Second, the stitching itself — your machine time, your thread, and your attention while it runs. Third, a little extra for your handling time — the messaging, the hooping, the trimming, the packaging. Beginners forget the third part and end up working for free.

Here is one worked example. Say the blank sweatshirt costs you 12 dollars. Charging about double the blank cost — 24 dollars — covers the garment plus the shipping and errands it took to get it. A single name is a few thousand stitches; at 1 dollar 50 per thousand stitches, call it 6 dollars of stitching. Add 5 dollars for the hooping and 5 dollars for your handling time. That comes to 40 dollars — roughly three times what the blank cost you. If 40 dollars sounds high, remember it is covering a garment, machine time, thread, and your time, and that a customer buying a personalized piece expects to pay more than blank-sweatshirt price.

You do not have to redo this math for every order. Broidry stores it as your rate card — your standard prices, saved once so every quote uses them: what you charge per thousand stitches, per hooping, for digitizing, and your minimum. It lives on the Pricing page in your dashboard, and it comes pre-filled with common starting rates (the same numbers used in the example above) so you can quote from day one. When you build a quote on an order, the numbers come from the card and you can still adjust any line.

And prices are never permanent. If your first price turns out too low, raise it on the Pricing page and every quote after that uses the new number. Almost every embroiderer's first prices are too low. That is normal, and it is fixable in one edit.

Take a practice order from yourself

Before a stranger uses your shop, use it yourself once. You will see exactly what your customer sees, and the first real order will feel familiar instead of new.

1. 1Copy your shop link from the Today page and open it the way a customer would.
2. 2Order your own product. Go through every step of the form — the personalization, the wording, the spelling confirmation — and submit it under your own name.
3. 3Go back to your dashboard and open Orders. Your practice order is sitting there with the status New, with every answer you gave saved on it.
4. 4Open the order and build its quote. Watch the rate card fill in the numbers. This is the same screen you will use on a real order.
5. 5Open the order's tracking link — the page your customer would watch while you work. Then mark the practice order Cancelled. Cancelling keeps it around without counting it as a real sale.

What happens when a real order arrives

A real order works exactly like your practice one. It lands on your Orders page as New, and if the customer skipped a detail, the order says so plainly so you can ask for everything in one message. You build the quote from your rate card and send it; the customer accepts with one tap and pays before you stitch. The order moves to your Production list, you stitch it, and you mark it Done.

Share your shop link anywhere your future customers already are: a Facebook comment, an Instagram bio, a text to a friend who asked about your work. You do not need to finish everything first — the shop page only shows what you have added, so a shop with three products looks complete, not empty. One product, one price, one link. That is a shop.