With this business idea you would offer a service to customize martial arts belts, uniforms, or cloth weapons bags with embroidery.
You could put the name on one side of the belt and their name in Korean (for Tae Kwon Do, for example) on the other side.
You could also offer this service to the martial art's dojo instructors by offering to embroider the name of their business and their tag line on their uniforms and other martial arts clothing items.
You should be able to charge $25 - $50 for 25 characters or less.
You will want to decide whether you would like your customers to provide the uniforms and belts to be personalized.
You may want to purchase such items in bulk and then you will be able to promise shorter turn-around times and deliver them their personalized items more quickly and with more profit.
You will also want to decide how many different language and font options you would like to offer to your customers.
The most common choices are English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
You should probably
build a website
to show customers the various forms of embroidery and items of clothing they can choose from.
This will also allow you to create a price list and an easy to use payment system.
Check out
Angelfire.com
for an example of a simple website and what some of these personal martial arts embroidered items look like.
It would also be a nice personal touch to include information on your website such as directions for proper belt tying.
If you do not currently own an embroidery sewing machine, they can be easily purchased at a local sewing center.
A single search online turned up resources for purchasing embroidery machines from HSN to Sears and every kind of company in between.
All Brands Embroidery Sewing Machines has a good selection of machines, and they also had an excellent embroidery disk with Asian characters and motifs that you can find on their site under embroidery software.
eBay and other auction sites are also good sources for purchasing embroidery sewing machines and digital embroidery software.
They can be purchased reconditioned or new with a wide array of functionality.
You will need to decide whether you want to purchase a machine that can be used with pre-programmed symbols and fonts or one that will work with other kinds of software.
Some are compatible with common designing programs and allow you to embroider any design that you can personally draw or design.
This choice allows a lot more freedom in font style and decorative designs.
You can also do an online search to find a lot of affordable wholesale suppliers of martial arts uniforms and belts if your customers want to buy new items to have embroidered from you instead of supplying their own.
You may want to expand this business idea by offering to personalize more general types of clothing items with embroidered Asian symbols and words.
Let your customers know that adding such designs will help to add an oriental mystique to their persona.
For instance, you could sew on the Chinese blessing patterns of "Fu" and "Shou" character icons, meaning good luck and longevity.
A Chrysanthemum symbolizes purity and longevity in the Chinese culture and is one of the four plants of virtue along with plum blossom, orchid and bamboo, the so-called "Four Men of Honor".
Offering to personalize items with these patterns might be a good way to add additional business while you are trying to make a name for yourself.
Lastly, your customers will need to know how to find you!
You will likely want to advertise your services by running a visible ad in a local phone directory, listing your business with an online business directory, and by printing up flyers and posting them in places where people who would benefit from your services are likely to visit.
Be sure to include elementary schools, popular lunch places, and coffee shops! Most post offices and grocery stores also have bulletin boards that they will allow you to place an advertisement on.
Be sure to take advantage of any public bulletin boards in your immediate area to find the people who are looking for you and your services.
And of course stop by and introduce yourself to owners and teachers at Martial Arts Studios in your area.
You can even expand to a wider area by doing an internet search for studios in your county or state and mailing out brochures.
In no time at all, you can build up a large clientele base, many by word of mouth as they receive items with your quality embroidery on them and want more!
Many people are looking for unique money making ideas, and I think supplying customized embroidery of martial arts items would definitely be a niche that would not be super competitive, and would be very enjoyable and of course unique and profitable too.
And since you would have an investment in an embroidery machine, you could also expand this business idea to service other types of studios too, such as yoga studios or dance studios.
