What Makes a Good Sewing Machine Technician and why are there so few of us out there?
It’s not that grasping the fundamentals of the workings of a sewing machine is all that hard, it’s just that there’s such a vast array of sewing machines out there that we need to lay our hands on to be competent and proficient in what we do. There is no course out there that will teach you this, yes you can learn the basic fundamentals from a so called course, but sewing machine engineering is a ancient trade. It is learned through hands on experience.
So a lot of people will ask me, “Why are there so few of you out there?” Well, obviously businesses close and so on, but it’s again because of this distinction that this business is really, really hard to get good at.
For example somebody could open a quilt shop or a fabric shop, with sewing machine repair, and in that first year they kind of learn a little bit, they may even get halfway decent, but quite frankly, it takes a good five years for a technician to get good and a good decade to get very good. A person needs to have laid their hands simply on enough models and seen the array of problems that these will manifest, in order to break through from being mediocre at best to being good. Its having that experience that really makes them much better than the average Joe. This all takes time however and in the meantime, they’re kind of stuck. They get a bad reputation for not being a good technician, and it’s just a matter of experience and time. You could be in this business for twenty years and only fix a thousand machines, you could be in this business also twenty years and fix twenty thousand machines.
Having that accessibility to all these different machines that we have to repair just makes us better. But that’s why we don’t have as many of us out there.
Connections also play a vital role. Despite nearly 20 years fixing sewing machines sometimes its necessary to ask a colleague in the industry if they are familiar with a certain issue. I am very lucky that I am part of a group of engineers globally that all pool our knowledge, "Every day is a school day" so the saying goes! You see being a great sewing machine engineer is not just the fundamentals (and this is where we see the tailing off of the older generation of engineers) it is the understanding of complex electronics, the ability to access or recreate obsolete parts via new technologies such as 3D Printing, and being able to trouble shoot issues that didn't even exist on a sewing machine 10 years ago!
In summary there are not many of us about as the industry is hard to get good at, a person must constantly evolving and learning in order to become a great sewing machine engineer. Its far easier for someone to sell you a new machine then to repair your old one, so many stay mediocre gain a poor reputation and ultimately go out of business.
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