Planning notes · July 2026
The embroidery bar run of show, hour by hour
Copy this timeline into your production schedule and adjust the clock to your doors. It assumes the most common booking — a hybrid station serving an evening event — and it is the same sheet our own crew works from.
T-minus 7 days to T-minus 90 minutes
T-7 days: stitch files final. You’ve approved test-stitch photos on the actual blanks; menu cards go to print. T-3 days: blank counts confirmed against final RSVP; venue COI delivered; power and placement confirmed with your venue contact in one email you’re cc’d on. T-90 min: crew at dock. Machines roll in on two carts, the counter builds in about twenty minutes, thread wall and garment staging take the rest. T-30 min: test stitch on each head using a sacrificial blank — tension verified on the fabric guests will actually receive. T-10: finished sample pieces staged on the rack, menu cards fanned, crew in event dress.
Hour one to last call
Hour one is browse-heavy: guests orbit, touch blanks, photograph the machine mid-stitch. Output runs below capacity and that’s fine — the display rack is being built. Hour two is the rush. The press carries quick patch and chenille requests while both needles run monograms back to back; the intake rack absorbs overflow (“drop your hoodie, back in 25”). Final hour: we announce last call for machine pieces 45 minutes out — a six-to-nine-minute stitch needs runway — while the press serves until the final ten. Unclaimed intake pieces get finished, bagged and labeled, handed to your coordinator with a checklist.
Teardown runs 45–60 minutes, quiet enough to happen during a closing speech if the schedule demands. The corner is returned bare — venues remember vendors by their exits, and so do the planners who book twice. Staffing hours across this whole arc bill at the flat $250/hr from the pricing page; capacity assumptions behind the rush plan are in the throughput answer. Want this timeline pre-filled with your event’s clock? Send the brief and it comes back annotated.
The failure modes we pre-solve
Three things threaten any run of show, and all three have standing fixes. The single-wave crowd — a general session releasing 400 people at once — is why the hybrid format exists: the press absorbs the surge in sub-two-minute pieces while the needles keep their queue honest via signup cards with realistic time slots. The misspelled name is solved by ritual: guests write their own name, the attendant reads it back, and the card travels with the garment to the hoop. Machine trouble is solved by redundancy — spare needles, bobbins, and a backup head travel in the cases, and a mid-event swap takes minutes without the line noticing. None of these are improvisations; they are agenda items.
Who is actually working the station
The standard hybrid crew is three people with distinct lanes. The machine operator owns stitch quality and never leaves the head. The intake attendant hoops garments, verifies spellings, and manages the drop-off rack — the role that quietly doubles throughput by keeping the needle threading, not talking. The floor host works the queue: menu cards in hands, decisions made before guests reach the counter, last call announced on schedule. All hours for all three bill at the flat rate on the pricing page, load-in through strike, so the staffing plan is visible on the quote instead of buried in it.
Shifting the clock for daytime programs
Conferences invert the evening arc. The bar opens with registration, sleeps during sessions, and surges at breaks — machines pause cleanly, so split windows cost only the hours you actually run. The intake rack matters more by day: attendees drop a quarter-zip between meetings and collect it stitched at the next break, which turns dwell-time limits into a feature. Evening galas compress everything into one long build; daytime programs breathe. Both fit the same sheet — the difference is where the rush lands, and the conference page shows the daytime variant staged.
What you see while it runs
A run of show is also a communication plan, so here is yours. You get one text when the station goes live and a mid-event photo drop — usually the machine mid-monogram with a crowd around it, the shot sponsors ask for. If the queue plan needs adjusting (a keynote runs long, a surprise VIP table wants robes), the floor host makes the call with your coordinator in one conversation, not a committee. At strike you get the piece count on the spot, and the formal closeout follows within days. The station should never be the thing you are managing at your own event; the sheet exists so it never is.
Print this page, pencil your doors time into the margins, and send it with the brief — the annotated version comes back before you have picked the linens.