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Did you know that Social Imprints embroiders Made in The USA, organic cotton and sustainably produced hats as well as all of the other great, eco-friendly merch. It’s autumn now, which means it’s the perfect time to go on a deep-dive of all the things you need to know about designing and printing embroidered hats, which are fantastic to give away as a gift or sell directly to your customers -- especially when it’s cold outside!
Whether you’re in the market for snapbacks, structured, unstructured, trucker beanies, or anything in-between -- and we’re happy to give you all the tools you need to create your very own custom-branded embroidered hats that show for your next virtual event, employee giveaway or customer gift.
But now that I’ve successfully hooked you into all this “embroidered hats” business, there are some ground rules that I’m afraid I must lay down, respectfully, with regards to our embroidering process. After that, we can get started with the fun bits that you truly came here to see, but let’s get the hard part out of the way first, shall we? Brace yourself, dear reader.
As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I always find it easier to deliver the smallest news first: the lettering on your custom-branded embroidered hat cannot be smaller than a quarter inch.
And, unfortunately for the mixers and matchers out there, you can't blend colors either, so there's no gradients. But that’s just fine! The 220 or so Pantone colors that we do offer are visually pristine and stand out nicely when embroidered into any hat.
Finally, the max width on the embroidery on the front of the hat should be under 5 inches. It’s important to design within these dimensions because you may not like how the embroidered hat comes out otherwise -- in fact, going beyond those dimensions, you will very likely end up with an embroidered image that seems too stretched out or skewed.
Still holding your breath? Stop that! Luckily for both of us, I’m just about finished listing everything we can’t do for you. Now let’s talk exclusively about the cool parts of our embroidering process that we can do!
We use puff embroidery, which allows for 3-dimensional designs and can give your own brand’s styles an athletic-wear feel to them. We can embroider on most hats. If you’re not into snapbacks, we also embroider “dad” hats and bucket hats as well as our always-comfortable beanies. Speaking of, you can rest assured that “dad” hats have seen a rise in popularity, and bucket hats are also coming back in style, so you can get creative with your options here without feeling too bad about it afterward.
Speaking of getting creative, you can get creative within your unique designs by decorating multiple locations on your custom-branded embroidered hat. You will want to make good usage of the front, but I also heavily encourage you to make use of the sides and the back too. If you want something really special, you can even screen print or heat transfer the bill.
As a quick word of advice, even when being creative, you should still try to think simple when making your embroidered hat design. The simpler the design, the better-suited the design will be for embroidery in general, but this is especially true of hats, because they’re significantly more difficult to work with than other product types. I’m simply looking out for you!
The best part of our process is that you can make your custom-branded embroidered hat look like a premium-designed hat suited for a retail storefront by adding your own custom label to it. In order to make this process even more fun and efficient, we suggest you go to your favorite retail store, find something you love, then send us a photo or sample. We'll do our best to knock your socks off with how closely we can get your brand’s custom embroidered hat to your “reference” hat’s style and quality.
If you’re not sure about your custom-branded hat design, you can send it in and we can do a free review before we print anything. We can even create and send a sample to you -- allowing you to see what your order looks like before we finish the whole batch. Don’t ignore this! It’s extraordinarily useful to gauge how tenable your design is before sending it off to a large order where it’ll get printed in droves. Would you rather have 500 hats with the wrong design or just one hat that you can still tweak? I think you’ll agree that it’s always a better idea to prevent yourself from ordering a bad batch, and custom designs do take a little bit of tweaking after all.
Keep in mind that we offer embroidered patches as well! Embroidered patches are perfect for quickly and effortlessly weaving style into any hat, and cost far less to purchase -- not only because the materials are less expensive, but because you can reuse patches between hats!
Social Imprints offers plenty of design options for embroidered hats -- once again, up to 12 colors, but with no blends and no gradients -- and several different types of hat to choose from including snapbacks, beanies, and “dad” hats. Order your embroidered hats and beanies now, so you’re prepared to keep the rain and snow off your employees’ and customers’ heads this coming cold season!