MPS Workwear
Joel Dear, director, with the ZSK Racer in MPS's (nearly finished) new unit.
An interview with Joel Dear, Director
Tell us a bit about your business
We’re a fairly small family-run print and embroidery company dealing mainly with local businesses, schools and clubs. We took over an existing business in 2015 and things have grown steadily and organically through recommendations and local advertising. Now we’re at the stage where we need more embroidery capacity so that we can cope with the extra workload and keep turnaround times down.
What is the latest embroidery machine you’ve bought and when did you buy it?
The latest machine is a ZSK six-head delivered at the beginning of February 2019. We had already purchased two single-head and one twin-head ZSK machines that replaced our original SWF single-head machines.
How much did it cost?
It was in the region of £36,000, including cap attachments and so on.
Why did you choose this embroidery machine? What do you think are its main advantages
I liked the quality of the embroidery, the speed at which they could run while still producing quality results, and the industrial nature of the machines. There are a lot of businesses that run multiple single- head machines from home offices and the ZSK machines seemed to be much more industrial and designed to run all day, everyday with very little maintenance.
Is there anything you’d like to see in an upgrade or don’t particularly like about it?
We were able to make a last minute change to our machine whereby each head can embroider a different name if the design is set up correctly. Other than that I think the only extra that I’d like would be similar to SWF machines where two designs can be run on one machine simultaneously by changing the head selection.
What sort of work is it used for?
Anything from a couple of polo shirts or ‘worker packs’ to larger runs of school uniforms; ranging from simple text in one position to much more elaborate designs according to individual customer requirements. Now that we have more capacity we hope to be able to quote for larger jobs more competitively and gain additional customers that way.
Does your latest machine work in combination with your other machines?
As we have now replaced all of our older machines with ZSK machines we are able to run any job on any machine with ease, giving us more flexibility.
What would be your advice to others thinking of buying an embroidery machine?
I think it’s important to consider aftersales support more than anything. If something were to go wrong or we have any niggles we can call Stocks and they will get an engineer to give us a call and talk us through a fix. As they are based in Leeds and we are in the south-east this is really important, but if needed I’m sure they would send an engineer as they’ve always been very helpful with us.
Credit: Article taken from Images Magazine from the November 2017 edition. View article online by clicking here.
