How to Price an Embroidered Patch
Patch pricing goes wrong in a specific way: someone quotes a per-patch price they remember from a big order, then runs a batch of fifteen and makes nothing. The culprit is almost always the digitising fee, which you pay once and then have to recover across however many pieces you actually sew.
Stitch count drives thread, area drives twill
Two different measurements do two different jobs. Thread consumption tracks the stitch count, which depends on how densely the design is filled. The backing fabric tracks area, which does not care what is stitched on it. A 3″ × 2″ badge filled edge to edge and a 3″ × 2″ script name use the same twill and wildly different amounts of thread.
If the design is already digitised, take the stitch count from the file. It is exact and it takes ten seconds to look up. Estimating from density is for quoting work that has not been digitised yet, and it is only as good as the density figure you feed it — which is why that field is yours to set rather than a number we picked for you.
Digitising is why small runs hurt
A $25 digitising fee on 200 patches is 13 cents each. The same fee on 10 patches is $2.50 each, which on a small name patch can exceed every other cost combined. The calculator spreads the fee across your actual quantity so the per-patch number tells the truth about the job in front of you. If you quote small runs at your large-run price, you are paying for the customer’s digitising.
Backing is a real line item
Sew-on costs nothing extra. Iron-on adds a few cents. Hook and loop is the one that surprises people — both halves, cut to shape and attached, and it can add more per patch than the thread does. If a customer asks for velcro backing on a small order, requote rather than absorbing it.
Rush pricing pays for displacement
A rush job does not use more thread. It uses your schedule. Whatever was queued behind it moves back, and the surcharge is what makes that trade worth making. Set the percentage by how much disruption the job actually causes: compressing a comfortable week is not the same as sewing on a Sunday.
Where patches sit next to your other work
If you also run garments, the embroidery pricing calculator handles stitch-count pricing on blanks, and the wholesale pricing calculator works backwards from a wholesale price to check the margin still stands.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge for an embroidered name patch?▼
A small name patch, roughly 3 by 1 inches on twill with an iron-on backing, usually lands somewhere between $3 and $6 per patch on a run of 25 once thread, backing, machine time and a share of the digitising fee are counted. The number moves a long way with quantity: the same patch on a run of 10 can cost twice as much per unit, because the one-off digitising fee is spread over fewer pieces. Put your own costs into the calculator above rather than working from a range.
How do I work out the stitch count for a patch?▼
The reliable answer comes from the digitised file itself, which reports an exact count. If you are quoting before the file exists, estimate from area: multiply the patch's square inches by a stitch density you have measured on your own past jobs. Density swings enormously between an open script name and a fully filled badge, so a single house figure applied to every design will misquote one of them.
What is a fair rush charge for patches?▼
Rush pricing covers the work you displace, not extra materials. A patch job that jumps the queue pushes something else back, and the surcharge is what makes that worth doing. Common practice runs from about 25% for a job that only compresses your schedule up to 50% or more when it forces evening or weekend machine time. The calculator applies whatever percentage you set to the finished price.
Why does the price per patch drop so much on larger orders?▼
Digitising is charged once no matter how many patches you sew. On a run of 10 that fee lands on ten pieces; on a run of 200 it barely registers. Thread, twill and backing scale linearly, and machine time per patch stays roughly flat, so digitising is the main driver of the per-unit difference between a small and a large order.