I received a call from a company in Toronto that claimed they did quality digitizing for a lot cheaper than what I currently pay. I guess they didn't realize I am a digitizing centre but they got my interest and I started to ask questions. They claimed having 12 highly trained digitizers in Toronto (and 12 more in the US), could deliver within 8 hours. I am pretty familiar with the industry and highly doubted that a group of 12 digitizers in any one place would be something I wouldn't know about. They also said this work was being done at the low price of $3.75/1000 stitches! I have heard of many off-shore digitizers charging that but how could a group of North American digitizers make a living at that price. I have the latest greatest software, have been in the business for a long time and think I work pretty efficiently. I can’t see how they could pay the salaries, rent, heating, insurance, alarm, phone, and taxes and still have money for groceries! The first design was FREE so I decided to give them a test. I decided to get to know to my competition. I was told they could provide native POF or EMB files and most other embroidery file formats. I assumed they should have the latest software using the most advanced and efficient technology to pump out the stuff and make money at it, but high-end software is costly so how can they charge so little?

So I sent them a very straight forward design of a filled circle, with arced lettering of different size and fonts, inside and outside. I immediately received a read receipt for my email so I knew it had arrived. Well I waited the promised 8 hours and then followed up 2 days later.

I tried calling the Toronto phone number but it was temporarily out of service. No problem, I called the US number but the line was busy. When I searched the phone number I found that both the Toronto and US numbers were unlisted (the US number was a landline in Beverley Hills but was unpublished). How odd! Why would anybody not list their business number? On their web site you can send them enquiries over the internet which I did since I couldn’t get through over the phone. When I was finally able to talk with them, they claimed they never received my order and said that it probably didn’t go through because I didn’t have an account with them. They were very apologetic and said they would get it done quickly, so I resent the order. Within less than 8 hours I got the design back. Hmmm, the letters were closer on one side to the edge of the circle than the other. Oh, wait a minute, not just a spelling mistake but a complete word replaced by another. One line of text was smaller than the rest of the lettering. I found 8 mistakes in all (I thought I was playing the game of can you see the difference?). If you think about it how can they monitor their quality very closely with all those digitizers? Oh and did I mentioned that it arrived as a DST format even though I had requested PXF or POF. (They later explained that they cannot give out their native embroidery files (i.e. POF or EMB) contrary to what they told me before and what is on their web site!). So I listed the errors for them and they promised to fix everything, run another sewn sample and send it back to me quickly (with a scan of the sewn sample). I took this opportunity to ask them where their office was in Toronto since I will be there over the holidays and would like to drop by. I was told their Canadian office was in the process of moving (…probably to Beverley Hills, not that I blame them, the weather would be better in the winter). So I asked who the owner of their company was, and guess what….it’s a division of another company whose head office is in INDIA! They were advertising themselves as a Canadian based company and were promoting themselves as such but it sure didn't look like that was the case.

So I finally got back the corrected version of the design, and found another issue, the fill had a vertical underlay. Anyone who has taken a course with me knows that it’s a big NO NO. And by the way, the scan of the sewout they sent me as “proof”, well it was just the 3D view from their program SIMULATING a sewout!

Everyone loves a bargain but if you factor in the wasted time, frustration, and potential problems if I hadn’t intercepted the errors, it is just not worth it. As a North American Digitizing Centre I now compete with off shore digitizing that is misrepresenting itself as domestic.

The moral of the story, you get what you pay for!

Beverley Field

The Embroidery Dinosaur