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Embroidery on Apparel and Products
Updated on 23rd April 2025
Embroidery is an ancient method for decorating fabric using a needle and thread. Using modern-day machines that can handle large, bulk orders we utilise
embroidery to apply logos to promotional products like apparel, headwear, and bags.
What is Embroidery?
Embroidery is stitching a logo, name, or design directly into the fabric using coloured threads. Unlike printing, embroidery creates a raised, textured finish known for its durability and premium appearance. It’s been used for centuries to decorate garments, but in today’s commercial world, it’s a trusted branding technique for long-lasting exposure to fabric-based items.
In our business, we use embroidery machines that run off software that controls over a dozen machine needles simultaneously. This enables us to create wholesale volumes of decorated products quickly. The modern process starts with transforming your digital logo into a stitch-ready file. This file guides the machine to apply threads accurately to your items—whether you’re branding polos, jackets, caps, or bags. Each order is carefully set up by our in-house team to ensure positioning, thread colours, and stitching density meet the highest standards.
The Advantages of Embroidery
- The major advantage of embroidery is that unlike screen printing, there is no limit on the number of colours you can have in your design. Not only can we embroider any mix of colours you require, but we also don’t charge based on the number of colours used. Instead, it costs are based on the complexity of your design (the number of stitches used to complete your logo).
- Embroidery is also a faster technique to complete than pad or screen printing because stitching does not require time to dry. Once the machine has embroidered your design onto your products, they are packed straight away and sent out for delivery.
- Additionally, for orders over 100 units, there are no setup costs for most standard designs. This is not applicable to pad printing or screen printing, sadly, as these will always require a setup cost regardless of the quantity you order. It means embroidery is more cost effective overall for large orders and the technique we recommend for the best results on clothing and headwear.
- Advantages of this branding technique include resistance to fading, washing, and wear.
The Disadvantages of Embroidery
- Embroidery can only be used on fabric materials such as clothing, hats, and some bags. This means we cannot use embroidery to decorate any of our plastic or metal products.
- While this method isn’t charged based on your use of colour, it is charged based on the number of stitches. So the more complex or large your design, the more the cost of your decoration will be.
What Promotional Items Do You Brand Using Embroidery?
We can use embroidery as a preferred branding technique on an assortment of amazing items to suit all budgets. Some of the most popular items to embroider include;
- Custom Caps
- Custom Polo Shirts
- Custom Corporate Uniforms
- Personalised Hoodies
- Branded Backpacks
- Custom Beach Towels
- AS Colour Apparel
How We Embroider Promotional Products
If you’re curious as to how we manage the branding process using embroidery, please watch the video below. We filmed this in our Sydney factory to show you exactly how we brand en masse using embroidery. Even if you have a basic understanding of the process, we’re sure you’ll enjoy the video that breaks it down for you in several easy steps. If you like our video feel free to check out our YouTube channel for more interesting behind-the-scenes footage from the industry. If you prefer to read about the step by step embroidery process at our Sydney Australia facility, please refer to our blog.
