ImagesMagUK_November_2021

EMBROIDERY www.images-magazine.com 52 images NOVEMBER 2021 Totally Branded: Melco EMT16X from Amaya Sales UK Taylor Tassie, managing director Tell us about your business Totally Branded is a full-service promotional merchandise and branded clothing supplier based in Norfolk. The company currently employs a team of 14 staff across various departments producing effective merchandise for our clients across the globe. We work with various partner suppliers and decorators both in the UK and across the globe, but also have our own on-site production and warehouse facility, which includes various departments ranging from DTG, UV digital, sublimation, transfer, and embroidery. We are proud to work with clients of all shapes and sizes from the local barber shop through to global organisations such as Amazon, Royal Mail, and Lloyds Bank, to name a few. What are the latest embroidery machines you’ve bought and why? As a company we outsourced our embroidery requirements for many years; however, at the start of 2021, we decided it was time to create our own in-house embroidery facility after securing some new demanding uniform contracts, to ensure the guarantee of lead times and to maintain our service level agreements. This facility provides both our team and our customers with far greater control and peace of mind. We purchased the first Melco in January of this year, and the second in July. Why did you choose the Melco machine? We briefly explored another machinery range, but quickly fell in love with the Melco machine and its modular capabilities. To be honest, cost was a big factor in our initial decision to move ahead with Melco. The ability to purchase a single-head initially to test the water for some small quantity orders was certainly something that appealed to us. We then loved the idea that we could quite easily bolt on additional heads with ease and with no additional training for the operator as the department grew for us. Is there anything you’d like to see in an upgrade or don’t like about it? So far we have no complaints. The Melcos have helped us achieve some amazing work and met some very tight timeframes for customers’ urgent orders. Any time we have had any snags or something is causing us grief, Amaya has been quick to solve any issues for us, which have mostly just been educational advice to the operator. What are the machines like to use? Although I do not personally have the privilege of running them day to day, the laser alignment tool is a godsend! The ability to laser trace the exact outline of the design can also be very useful for peace of mind when alignment is crucial. And the cap attachment really does make caps far easier to run, in my opinion. What type of work are they used for? We still outsource a large portion of our bulk-run embroidery to partners at this point as we are in no huge hurry to majorly scale up our facility. We currently run two heads, but have plans for this to double to four heads within the next six months. We find the sweet spot for our in-house Melcos is the smaller quantity one to 250 runs and also work that is very time critical or required urgently (which, let’s be honest, is 99% of work at the moment!). To give you an idea, we can usually run 50-70 left chest designs across seven hours per head. So a capacity of around 100-140 per day at present. Obviously this number will vary depending on the design and stitch count. What would be your advice to others wanting to purchase an embroidery machine? I would say ultimately it all depends on the volume you are planning to put through from day one. www.totallybranded.co.uk The Melco’s laser alignment tool “is a godsend”, says Taylor Tassie