In 1996, Cindy and I moved from the Washington, DC area into the rural community of Goodview, Virginia. We were planning to raise our children in the relative peace of an unstressed "hometown."
The problem was, that my new Embroidery Digitizing business was not supporting itself, much less, my family. That Christmas, with too much time on my hands and no money for gifts, I decided to make a shirt for my, then first grade, son. You guessed it. That was the very first shirt like the ones we sell now.
When he wore it to school, the teachers followed my son to the car and pleaded with his mother to let them order shirts like his! I knew we had something then, but I didn't know how to market it.
For the next seven years, my digitizing business grew and I didn't think much more about those shirts until I stumbled, one day, onto a government web site that listed all the statistics for every school in the nation! On a whim, I typed MONROE into the search engine, and I was presented with over 100 results. That was the day this all became possible. I set up one shirt for Monroe Elementary School and sent a sample to each of 25 addresses, and rest, as they say, is history.
Today, we send out many more samples each season, and your support has helped my family to make ends met, even when times have been lean in the digitizing business. We have been blessed in so many ways. My wife and I have been married for over twenty years. We have adopted some more kids along the way. Our children, all four of them, are succeeding in ways we never dreamed of. This has been, in no small part, because of opportunities that we were able to provide for them as a result of the sales of these shirts; a project which started out as a way to supplement our income.
And, of course, we get to sell these shirts to YOU! I cannot tell you how much fun it is to hear from our customers. The Elementary and Middle School teachers that buy these shirts call us all the time just to say how much they love these shirts. WHAT A BLAST!
And for all of this, we are very grateful! Thank you for all of your support since 2003!
