Where in the world am I today?: At Sea aboard the STAR Princess
When I grew up we called these embroidered bits of fabric patches. Later I found out that they can be called emblems or crests, but no mater what you call them, having and embroidered rendition of your logo that can then be applied to bags, hats, socks, jackets, shorts – heck, just about anything is a killer way to help reinforce your brand on just about anything and everything and has a slightly different effect than a peal and stick sticker.
I discovered the wonderful world of emblems semi by accident when I went in to get some baseball hats made up. I went into an embroidery shop and asked them to give me a quote on what it would cost to have my cbg logo embroidered onto a bunch of baseball caps. They came back with two prices one if they were to embroider directly to the caps and another if they created a heat applied crest that could be embossed onto the caps. The crest option was significantly less expensive, so I had the company make me a couple hundred and applied most of them to baseball caps.
There ended up being some left over crests after the baseball caps were done, so I started applying them to my luggage, the shorts I wear under my checkerboard performance pants, onto my computer bag, cable bags, hat box, and various other items that lent themselves well to accepting an iron-on patch.
A word about the iron-on process… If you do opt for getting heat glue crests made, I highly recommend sewing the crest on as well as heat gluing it to what ever you’re emblazoning with your logo. After my first run of crests had run out I went to another company who were able to deliver an even better result by die-cutting the crests once the embroidery had been completed. I had two sizes made, one for things like baseball caps and a second smaller size that was used on the yellow socks that I perform in. These mini logo patches were all heat sealed to the socks, but after I wore the socks, washed them and ran them through the heat cycle of a dryer the glue reheated and the patches started to peal off. The best way around this was to run a stitch around the emblem with my sewing machine to make sure that even if the glue heated up the emblems would come off. Although the glue is a decent solution for most applications I still feel that it’s a good idea to sew the patches into place if at all possible.
I can’t believe the number of people who comment on the fact that my luggage has the appearance of being a matching set simply because all of the cases have the logo on them. In a business where first impressions are incredibly important, having your gear look slick and professional suggests that everything you do is executed at a similar high standard. Every chance you’ve got to leave the client with a lasting impression is one that should be taken advantage of and these embroidered reminders of your logo and your brand are an excellent way to capitalize on this.
