By Mitch Cahn, President, Unionwear

Our USA-made hats cost more than the imported blanks our competitors decorate. To compete on the finished, decorated price, we cut our embroidery prices by 25% and dropped the minimum order from 144 pieces to 24. We did it with lean manufacturing, taking embroidery setup from two and a half hours to 22 minutes.

Why did we have to lower our embroidery costs in the first place?

There is no way around the cost of a domestic blank. So competing on a decorated price meant driving down the one cost we fully control: embroidery labor. Most buyers assume the cheapest path to a decorated hat is an inexpensive blank sent to a contract embroiderer. Lean manufacturing changes that math.

Why did embroidery setup used to take hours?

Setup averaged two and a half hours per order, and the bottleneck wasn’t the machines. It was finding the right thread. Thread lived in closed boxes labeled with color names like “cement” and “canary,” and operators, many of them not native English speakers, opened box after box looking for a match. The candidate then went to a manager for approval, and if it was wrong, back to the boxes. Once approved, the operator hauled twenty cones to the machine, found the loose end of each, threaded twenty heads, and repeated the whole cycle for up to nine colors on a design.

The fix was simple. Every cone moved into a clear bag, sorted into rainbow-ordered bins, labeled with the thread maker’s number instead of a color name. Managers match the color first, so the operator fetches a number instead of searching and waiting. Each bag always holds at least twenty cones, and thread ends are taped so they are easy to find.

The operator’s job changed from “search for a color and hope the manager approves” to “go get number 1801.” Nobody worked faster. We turned a guessing job into a fetching job, and two and a half hours became 22 minutes.

How much did this lower the price for customers?

We lowered embroidery prices by 25% and dropped the minimum from 144 to 24 pieces. The setup time buried in every order’s price went straight into lower decoration prices and the ability to run small orders profitably. Our operators embroider far more pieces because they spend their time producing instead of hunting for thread.

Setup step	Before	After
Finding a thread color	Open box after box to match a color name	Look up the maker’s number and go to the rainbow-ordered bin
Who matches the color	Operator guesses, manager approves, repeat	Manager matches first, operator fetches the number
Language barrier	Names like “canary” and “cement”	Numbers are universal
Threading	Hunt for each cone’s loose end	Thread ends taped
Average setup time	About 2.5 hours	22 minutes
Minimum order	144 pieces	24 pieces
Embroidery price	Baseline	25% lower

How do you keep prices low over time?

Thread organization is one example of the continuous improvement that runs through the whole plant. Lean manufacturing means we keep finding and removing waste and keep passing the savings into pricing. The technique here is what lean calls SMED, single-minute exchange of die: move the work that stops production into work done in advance.

What does this mean before you buy another blank?

If you assume the cheapest decorated hat is an imported blank sent to a contract embroiderer, compare it against a finished, decorated price on union made hats from us. With embroidery costs 25% lower and a 24-piece minimum, our all-in price often beats the route buyers assume is cheapest, and it is one supplier instead of two. Request a quote.

Published October 2026. Refreshed quarterly; changes are noted here.