By Samantha Sage
If you’re interested in custom embroidered merchandise for your business, especially if you’re a Pacific Northwest local business, you may have noticed especially long lead times and high prices while shopping around in 2023. Why is that?
While custom embroidered apparel has always been a time-consuming process, the entire embroidery industry is currently taking longer than normal to complete orders due to lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn hitting their industry particularly hard.
The custom apparel decoration industry has struggled to keep up with rapid inflation and the staffing issues that plagued American industries as a result of the pandemic. Due to these compounding hardships, several long-standing embroidery houses have closed their businesses as of April 2023.
This has left a considerable additional workload on the remaining decoration houses, necessitating price increases and pushing their production times beyond normal 2-4 week turns out to 6-7+ weeks.
At MARCO Ideas Unlimited, we’ve seen many market fluctuations since we started sourcing embroidered apparel for our clients in 1959. We always go out of our way to protect our customer’s best interests by sourcing decoration from trusted local partners to reduce lead times, keep transit costs down, and limit the environmental impact that comes with cross-country shipping.
We’re committed to continuing that service in the face of any industry difficulties, like the current embroidered promo delays.
We can still embroider your logo on almost anything you can imagine while keeping your marketing costs down – just get your order submitted to our sales team ASAP before any event needs, expecting a slightly longer production lead time for delivery & planning accordingly. We’ll still monitor production every step of the way to ensure your custom embroidered promos are top quality, and you’ll be kept in the loop on production timelines & shipment every step of the way.
If you need a quick turnaround on embroidered promos for your business, we can still help you as always – but please be prepared for rush service charges required to accomplish your order on your timeline with our trusted decorators.
We’re grateful for the opportunity to help you promote your brand with embroidered apparel, custom merchandise, and more! If you have any concerns about your promo needs, reach out to our sales team directly for expert, caring service.
Samantha Sage is the Marketing Coordinator & Sales Assistant for MARCO Ideas Unlimited. Sam leverages her years of multi-industry marketing experience to help businesses grow their brands with quality promotional products. When Sam isn't researching new & unique swag options, you can find her in the Oregon woods with her husband & senior rescue dog.