I want to bring up something that I don’t think gets talked about clearly enough in our business.
Lots of embroidery and clothing decoration shop owners work long hours, do really good work, and take excellent care of their customers. But they’re not paying themselves enough. Not even a decent amount. Not a comfortable amount. Just a fair wage.
Some aren’t paying themselves anything at all.
I’ve thought this for years, just from working with business owners and members of the National Network of Embroidery Professionals (NNEP). Now, we have numbers that prove it. Earlier this year, NNEP started the Embroidery Pricing Diagnostic. It’s a quick check that looks at how shops in our industry really set their prices. At the time this posted, 286 shops have answered it.
What those 286 shops told us is really important. I believe every shop owner in this industry should know about it.
The Numbers
The average score on that check-up was 7.8 out of 20. More than half the shops who finished it – 55% – landed in the lowest group, which we call “Pricing Blind Spots.” Only 6% demonstrated that they really know how to price well.
That’s pretty surprising on its own. But the answers to the specific questions really show what’s going on.
60% of shop owners have never figured out their real cost to make embroidered items. Not even a close guess. Never. Another 30% just have a rough idea. So, that means 90% of the people who answered don’t truly know how much it costs to do an order in their shop.
When they set prices, 85% don’t aim for a specific profit. They aren’t trying to hit a certain number. They’re just setting prices and hoping it works out.
75% decide their prices based on how many stitches are in a design or what other shops charge. They aren’t thinking about what their own business needs to make money.
Let me be really clear about what this means. If you don’t know your actual cost to produce something, and you haven’t included a profit goal in your prices, then you’re not really pricing at all. You’re just guessing. And most of the time, those guesses are too low. That’s because the pressure to get the job or match another shop’s price tends to push prices down, not up.
When prices are always low, the owner’s pay is the first thing to go. Not money for new machines. Not for materials. The owner just takes the hit. They work more hours to try and cover the profit that wasn’t there in the first place. The business keeps going, the owner doesn’t get paid, again and again.
What Concerns Me More Than the Wages
If an owner isn’t paying themselves a decent wage, it’s pretty certain they’re also not saving for retirement. There’s just no money left to put away.
Actually, far too many owners are doing the exact opposite. They’re using up their savings, their retirement funds, their personal money, to fill in the holes in their business. They’re not building for later. They’re basically propping up a business that’s slowly being emptied out by how they price things.
This isn’t about someone failing personally. It’s a problem with the whole system. The way prices are set doesn’t include the owner’s work, so their effort just vanishes. It’s taken on, not paid for, and never shows up in the books.
And it just gets worse over time. Every year that prices are too low means a year where no money goes into retirement. A year where financial security isn’t built up. For many shop owners, by the time they realize this, they’ve been doing it for ten years.
Why This Is an Industry Problem, Not an Individual One
Here’s why it’s so tough for one person to fix this: when most shops in an area charge too little, that low price becomes what customers expect. Shops trying to charge fairly then feel pressure from those other shops. It’s not because the low-priced shops are better at what they do, but because their owners are just taking the financial hit themselves.
This a drag on the whole industry. Collectively, we are all pulling each other down. It’s not on purpose, and no one means any harm, but it’s just how things are set up. The usual ways of pricing in this business came from looking at stitch counts and what competitors charge. They didn’t come from thinking about what a business actually needs to stay strong. And these pricing methods have been around for many, many years.
The only way to change how things are normally done in an industry is with actual data from that industry. Not just opinions. Not what one group thinks shops should do. We need real numbers, from real shops, of all different sizes and in all kinds of places. This will show us what the industry truly looks like and what makes profitable shops different from those that aren’t.
What We Are Building
NNEP is going to release “The State of Embroidery Pricing” on June 21, 2026, which marks NNEP’s 30th birthday. This will be the first study based on real numbers that looks at how shops in the embroidery and clothing decoration business set their prices.
The benchmark survey is quick – it only takes about five minutes. It’s different from the diagnostic. We won’t ever publish individual answers. What will be shared is the big picture for the industry: how shops price things, where the problems are, what the most successful shops do differently, and what the numbers tell us about how pricing affects whether a business can last.
This report won’t magically fix everything on its own. But you can’t fix something if the industry hasn’t even agreed to truly look at it. This is that chance to look.
What I Am Asking
If you own an embroidery or clothing decoration shop, please take NNEP’s benchmark survey. You can find it at nnep.com/benchmark. It should only take about five minutes.
If you’ve already done the diagnostic and seen your score, you probably have an idea of how your pricing is doing. This benchmark is the next step, not just for you, but for our whole industry.
95% of the shop owners who finished the diagnostic said they want this report when it comes out. That tells me our industry is ready to really understand the situation we are all facing. But it will only work if enough shops take part to make the information truly useful.
Your five minutes are important. And what you contribute could be the start of finally moving this industry towards prices that actually pay off.
Complete nnep.com/benchmark and add your data to the conversation. If you have not yet completed the Pricing Diagnostic, it also only takes a few minutes, is confidential, and adds different data to this conversation. Click nnep.com/diagnostic to see your pricing score immediately upon completion.