selling my commercial embroidery machine

In late 2006, I bought a commercial embroidery machine. It was supposed to supplement the scrapbook business I own. I thought it would be neat to embroider custom scrapbook covers to suit the needs of my niche customer base, adoptive families. After all, when is the last time you saw a scrapbook cover that was specific to adoption!

I didn't realize that I would have such a hard time finding the right type of material to do the embroidery. I mean, with that machine, I could embroider on just about anything, including toilet paper and nylon hose! But, unless it was going to be on one of those stretchy book covers, I was going to have to hire a book-binding service to adhere the embroidered cloth to the scrapbook album. By the time I bought the plain album, the material to be embroidered upon, compensated for the consumables used during embroidery, binding and a little for my time, that album was going to be so expensive that no one would want to pay.

I did find one workable option. Charles Craft, a company specializing in needlework products, made a scrapbook album cover meant to be used by those that enjoyed the art of cross stitch. Unfortunately, the cover would not actually fit on any of the name brand albums I wanted to carry. I ended up buying a case of covers and a case of albums Charles Craft recommended, Pioneer brand Photo Albums. They sold well, and despite I wasn't crazy with the actual stability of the album itself, I wanted to make it work! In fact, here is one that I have remaining:

Much to my disappointment, Charles Craft discontinued the sale of the needlework album covers, which had previously been available in both cream and navy.

Since I couldn't make album covers, I dabbled for a while in apparel. Again, I had a fair amount of success, but came up with every reason in the book for why the embroidery business was not for me...

Let me state, the machine I have is incredible! It should be for the $11,000 I paid for it! I hate to see it go. I really don't like giving up on anything I start out to do. But, with another baby that joined the family since the machine's purchase and two other side-businesses, there simply is not the time. Anyone want a really cool embroidery machine? It's an Amaya XT embroidery machine and it works great. And I have the stand, software and hoops to make it a viable startup business (or add-on if you already have other Amaya XT machines in your shop). Here's a photo from the manufacturer if you're interested: