Why you should not Embroider Snapbacks.

I want to start off by clarifying the title and saying that I do not necessarily believe we should completely give up on Embroidering Snapbacks altogether, but for the sake of your machinery, design quality, and finished product, you may want to seek out alternatives, both as a vendor and a client.

Embroidering Snapbacks and most concave shaped, non-linear items such as a canvas flat, a dad cap, or some other such malleable material, usually results in needle breaks, thread-breaks, and puts significant strain on the cap mounting frame and embroidery arm during assembly in order for it to be as near to the needle plate as possible when being mounted onto the sewing arm.

When produced overseas, the process of creating/embroidering a Snapback is generally carried out on flat material first, prior to being constructed into an actual Snapback. When carried out with domestically, ruling out the essential flat cut and sew process required to produce perfection, the result is inconsistency and needle breaks, and a lose, lose situation for both the vendor and the client.

So what is the solution? In many cases, the cap can be ordered or replaced fairly quick in time for the finished product to be handed over to the client. And be consistent on the sample that was agreed upon, and quality intended. Also in many cases, the client may only have been exposed to domestic quality completely ignoring store brand product, and commercial products that result in stitch precision, and very small design elements being reproduced with detail and quality.

Mechanically speaking, a dedicated machine should be used, so as to avoid unecessarily deteriorating the integrity of your machines over time by assigning the task to just one. If you're producing Snapback caps in very large quantity for the sake of retailing them, you may want to consider handing the process overs to a dedicated manufacturer overseas or locally who manufactures Snapbacks exclusively, so as to ensure quality control is inline with your expectations.

This should not deter you from producing Snapback caps locally, this was written from almost two decades worth of experience and observation in Machine Embroidery. At JB Screen Printing & Embroidery, our contacts in fashion and various industries, both locally and internationally allow us to produce at the quality that our clients have come to expect. Without the long wait times and exorbitant minimum production quantities, and shipping fees required to produce them overseas.