emborado turns one: Birthday special, free embroidery file and our first year
emborado is turning one! We are celebrating with one month of emborado for free, a special embroidery file by naduwu and a look back at an exciting first year.
emborado turns one 🎂
Exactly one year ago, emborado went online.
What started as a young application while we were still writing our Master’s theses and participating in the REACH Incubator is now used by several thousand people.
For us, that makes this a very special milestone.
And of course, we do not want our first birthday to pass without celebrating it together with you.
That is why we have prepared two birthday specials:
- 🎁 a special birthday gift for every registered emborado user
- 🎉 one month of emborado for free for everyone who does not currently have a subscription
And while we are celebrating, we also want to look back at a pretty exciting first year.
Our birthday gift: one month of emborado for free
Are you already using the free version of emborado but do not currently have a subscription?
Then we have a birthday gift for you.
Use the coupon code
HAPPYBIRTHDAY1
during our birthday campaign and get one month of emborado for free. 🎉
If you have only tried emborado with a smaller collection so far, this is a great opportunity to explore the application in more detail.
Our birthday file special: Mini Zip Bag ITH by naduwu
A birthday would not be complete without a present.
From August 28 to September 6, 2026, there is another special waiting for every registered emborado user.
Together with Svenja and Nico from naduwu, we are giving you the Mini Zip Bag ITH for free through emborado.
The small round zipper pouch is created directly in the embroidery hoop and is perfect for all those little things you want to keep close at hand.
For example:
- coins
- shopping cart tokens
- headphones
- keys
- other small personal items
By combining different fabrics, thread colors and zippers, you can create completely different versions from the same file.
A huge thank you goes to Svenja and Nico from naduwu for providing this wonderful file for our birthday celebration. 🧡
How to get the birthday file
You can add the file directly to your emborado collection during the campaign period.
- Sign in at app.emborado.de
- Open Sponsored in the navigation on the left
- Select the birthday file special
- Click “Add to collection”
Or simply open:
The file will then appear directly in your emborado collection.
One year of emborado: How it all started
At the end of August 2025, things looked quite different.
Linus and I were right in the middle of writing our Master’s theses in Business Informatics. At the same time, we were working on emborado, participating in the REACH Incubator and trying to find out whether our idea could really become a product people would want to use in the long term.
Our days were often divided between our theses, software development, user feedback, brainstorming sessions and our first startup pitches.
Not everything worked immediately.
Sometimes development went really well. Sometimes we reached the end of a long working day and had absolutely no idea how to solve the problem in front of us.
And sometimes we look at screenshots of the application from back then and ask ourselves:
How can a screenshot from 2025 already look like it is ten years old?
At the same time, this comparison shows us how far we have come in just twelve months.
An idea became a real application
The basic idea behind emborado is still the same.
If you collect embroidery files for many years, your collection eventually grows to hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of files.
Many embroidery file formats do not provide native previews in common operating systems. At the same time, file names and folder structures are often not enough to reliably find a specific design again later.
emborado was created to solve exactly this problem.
Over the past year, the first version has gradually developed into a much more comprehensive platform.
We have continued to improve the interface, expanded search and filtering options and worked on making large collections easier to organize.
Again and again, new functionality has grown directly from conversations with our community.
And there is one thing we learned very quickly:
A product is never really finished.
Every new feature creates new ideas. Every conversation teaches us something about how you organize your files. And sometimes a single message from one user reveals a problem we had never even considered before.
The most important part of our first year: our community
One thing we probably underestimated a year ago was the community that would develop around emborado.
We attended events and trade shows, met users in person and talked to many wonderful people from the embroidery and DIY world.
Many of you have:
- tested emborado
- reported bugs
- suggested new features
- given us honest feedback
- recommended emborado to others
- helped other users
- motivated us when something did not work as expected
For all of that, we simply want to say thank you. 🧡
We are equally grateful to the many designers who supported us throughout our first year.
Thanks to them, we were able to introduce new embroidery files, organize special campaigns and make designs available directly through emborado.
Many of these collaborations started with a simple message, a conversation or a meeting at an event.
For us, this community has become just as much a part of emborado as the software itself.
Lots of events, lots of new people and sometimes not much sleep
Our first year was eventful beyond software development as well.
We attended events, trade shows and startup programs, presented emborado again and again and met a huge number of new people along the way.
Giving pitches in front of larger audiences definitely felt unusual at first.
It has become a little more normal over time, although the excitement has never completely disappeared.
After some of those long days, we were understandably pretty tired.
Most of the time, however, we returned home with new ideas, new contacts and plenty of motivation.
New experiences in the Stoff im Kopf Accelerator
Another highlight of our first year was taking part in the Stoff im Kopf Accelerator.
It gave us another opportunity to explore completely new parts of startup life, try things we had never done before and gain valuable ideas for the future of emborado.
One particular highlight was something we definitely would not have expected when we started:
🎥 We won the production of our own image film.
Being part of a professional video shoot was completely new for us and a very exciting experience.
Of course, we will share the final result with you soon.
Stay tuned!
From embroidery files to DIY files
Perhaps the biggest change of our first year is another one.
When emborado launched, everything revolved around embroidery files.
But while talking to our community, we kept hearing similar comments:
“I actually have exactly the same problem with my sewing patterns.”
Others mentioned cutting files and additional types of digital DIY files.
That is why we started thinking bigger.
Our long-term goal is no longer just to create a great embroidery file organizer.
We want to build a platform where many different types of digital DIY files can be organized, explored and found again.
The next step is already here: sewing pattern management in emborado
By our first birthday, we have already taken an important step in that direction.
emborado can now also be used to manage digital sewing patterns. 🧵✂️
This brings the original idea behind emborado into another part of the DIY world.
Sewing pattern collections can grow quickly over the years as well. Files end up in different folders, downloads disappear somewhere on a computer and eventually it becomes difficult to remember which patterns you already own.
That is exactly the kind of problem we want emborado to help solve.
Embroidery files were the beginning.
Sewing patterns are the next step.
And there is much more to come.
Bring on year two 🚀
Looking back, our first year somehow feels both very long and incredibly short.
One year ago, we were writing our Master’s theses, working on a very early version of emborado and had no idea where all of this would lead.
Today, several thousand people use the platform.
What started as an embroidery file organizer is gradually becoming a platform for digital DIY files.
And we have at least as many plans for year two as we had for year one.
We want to continue improving emborado, build new functionality and expand the platform into additional areas.
Some major new developments are already being planned.
More to come. 👀
Most importantly, we want to continue this journey together with you.
Without your ideas, criticism, recommendations, embroidery files, sewing patterns and support, emborado would not be where it is today.
Thank you for an incredible first year. 🧡
Here is to year two!
Your
emborado team
Celebrate with us 🎂
🎁 Birthday file special for every registered user:
app.emborado.de/sponsored
🎉 No emborado subscription yet?
Use the coupon code HAPPYBIRTHDAY1 and get one month of emborado for free.
