Official Patch and Sticker BST thread

still have the espresso one?

 

You quoted the wrong post, but @Minerva09 should see this...

 

dammit! my bad

 

Kind of a long story but most patch makers don't have their own equipment because a 12 thread embroidery machine can cost upwards of $50K+ and then there's the laser cutting equipment, etc. Most overseas embroidery companies are based in China and do a ton of other work too, mostly promotional stuff like t-shirts, lanyards, socks, hats, etc., etc. So I create all of my own designs being a trained graphic artist, submit to a factory and then do all of the packaging, sales and marketing and fulfillment through my own website.

Most of the stuff I do is in short runs of 100 patches at a time. One-offs really aren't possible because most of the cost in having patches made is in the set up. It takes specialized software to "convert" a standard graphic file into a "embroidery file" which is kind of like a CAD format that plots where the stitches go, what time of stitching, color selection, etc. This is called "digitization" and is unique to making embroidery products.

Now there are some people who do have their own equipment stateside but these would be the equivalent of having a kuerig coffee maker to a full commercial espresso maker. Both are engineered to make basically the same thing but the scale, output and usually quality is vastly different. I know of only 3 or 4 manufacturers stateside who have the same stuff as the overseas operations but they are significantly more expensive mainly due to the overhead involved and limited capacity.

For custom short runs, I actually would recommend using Mark Maes who runs Amaesing Decals out of Southern California > https://amaesingdecals.myshopify.com/
But the cost of doing a low run may be prohibitive, depending on what kind of quantities you're thinking of.

Originally (over three years past) I just wanted a taco patch that was cool and better quality than what was out in the marketplace and ended up having to get a run made on my own and sold the extras here now known as "v1". I had no idea if anyone would actually want them and only ever thought I'd do the one run and be done so my experience is probably atypical? I chalk it up to luck, mostly.

So I know that's a lot of info but hopefully that gets across the general way these patches are being made that you see very commonly here in this thread (as well as the other more general collecting morale patch thread here). There are lots of people who make patches and the popularity ebbs and flows as any collectible hobby does. There's maybe about 100 different makers active right now which go from really big to pretty small. So it's a pretty diverse community and there are tons of options out there for people that collect pretty much everything...!

Hope that helps and apologies for the headache reading all my gibberish.

 

Great insight right here. And Mark Maes does some stellar work as well! I've had him make a few for me

 

Mark actually worked with me and made the Las Vegas charity patch that I designed and hosted them on his site.
@loyaltothetaco was one of the guys that came up with the idea and I executed the design.

 

Fascinating. Thanks for that. Yet another thing we don't do here anymore, it seems.

 

This just arrived.

 

That’s cool. I love the B&W on this 1.

 

Keeping it old school Disney

 

Who makes this? Still available or sold out?

 

skulls each $25 shipped PayPal FF
Sphere 35 shipped PayPal FF
Thanks

 

https://www.blkrfldiv.com/

 

Black Rifle Division

 

And thus not only started my patch addiction but also our friendship, good times!

 

Just a heads up the island skull is a non limited patch that is regularly restocked.

 

Thanks let’s do $25 shipped for the skulls!

 

All you Pizza Planet people

https://ecreations-art.com/products/evils-pizza-planet-pvc-minis-v212

 

Like everyone else, if they end up for sale...
I’m interested

 

. Sold Tacoma got to post some for sale.