by Ricochet » Wed Jan 14, 2015 12:41 pm
I used Butler (The Studio) for my teams patches. Was a relatively painless process.
Send them a photo, sketch or design and they will make a digital mock up which you can make as many changes to as you want until you are happy with it and approve. Only criticism on this process would be that it is all done via email/website, at least it was for me, so there was some lag time between my request for changes and the next version for me to review.
They do a "proof patch" and send you a picture of it to approve or make further changes.
Then the production run.
Patches are of good quality, at least my batch was, they have lots of options and styles to choose from. Even if you know exactly what you want I recommend going to their website to read the description of the options to get the terminology right when you make your order.
You will pay a premium for a small batch run so you might be better off going with US or local shop since the cost might be very close to any overseas/outsourced vendor and you will probably get it quicker. If the local place doesn't do patches exclusively they might give you a price break if you do hats, t-shirts or other branded swag along with the patches. Just my $0.02.