New vs Used Embroidery Machine Buyer's Guide

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Welcome to the 2015 used embroidery machine buyer's guide, what to look for in new VS. used in commercial embroidery equipment. What we're going to try to do over the next few slides and with a little bit of commentary is help you determine whether or not a used embroidery machine and commercial equipment is right for you and what the pros and cons are in buying new VS. used.
The biggest temptation for getting a used machine is probably the really low pricing meaning you'll spend anywhere between 10 to 50 thousand dollars or more depending on what level of the business that you are going into for a brand new embroidery machine, now for the typical startup that is looking at a single head machine you're going to spend between $11,000 and $16,000 for a new machine and probably between $8,00 and $12,00 dollars for a used machine.
So, the reason of course that you're going to look at a used is because the pricing, now there's also this kind of mystique behind a eBay and Amazon and Alibaba and places like this that kind of educate us or brain wash us into thinking that the best deal and the only way that you're going to get a great deal is by buying something from a bid site, a discount site or from a manufacturing site like Alibaba; so there is a little bit of mystique there that might make you tempted to purchase a used machine and there is a friend of a friend thing, so you might not (even) be ready to get into the commercial embroidery business but, you've got a friend of a friend or someone who knows someone whose getting out of the embroidery business and has a machine that they're trying to sell, so that's really appealing, right ? Because you've already got a relationship whether or not it’s a first or second tier relationship with somebody that owns a machine and is looking to sell and that can be really appealing because you are saving money and you have a certain comfort level there of who you're buying the product from or you may just be a deal hunter, I know some people that won’t buy anything unless it’s an amazing deal that part of the quality of a product or part of the goal in purchasing something is getting the best possible product at the lowest possible price, where price is intrinsic to the value of the equipment. That's not always the case when you're starting a business, but if you are a deal hunter then that is another big temptation why a used machine might be appealing to you.
But the first thing we need to do is to take a look at what makes a pro machine, what makes a commercial embroidery machine or professional embroidery machine and meet the requirements to called that and the first one is probably the commercial construction of the equipment. Now you can take a good high end consumer machine or prosumer machine that you've been embroidering on for years and really that's lot of the way that people get into business is they've got a home embroidery machine and they enjoy using it and they start doing something for friends like maybe do logos or pillow designs or something along those lines and they want to move up into the professional world, but honestly if you use one of those even higher end consumer machines whether its a happy or genome or anything along those lines and you run it for eight to 10 hours a day five to seven days in a week like you will in a commercial business, it’s just not going to last , it’s not built for that kind of use. So a professional machine is built to be a professional machine, professional machines are almost always multi-needle, in fact if it’s not multi-needle than its probably just a commercial sewing machine designed for cut and sow projects as opposed to embroidery.
A multi-needle machine is necessary for the commercial business, because you're going to be dealing with multi color logos or multi color designs and you simply will not have time to produce enough with a single needle machine to sustain your business and multi-needle can mean six needle monogram machine or 15 needle professional machine; the six needles is kind of going away in favorability most people are starting with a 15 needle or higher commercial embroidery machine and that's one of the criteria to make it prop.
Now commercial or professional machines..

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