Oh my goodness, a custom embroidery blog! I worry blogging has almost become a cliche and I'm just piling on...but in our archaic industry, it may be a welcome relief. ALTHOUGH, i do like to blab about business or embroidery to anyone who will listen for hours and hours.....BUT that's what blogging is meant for, right?!?!.

Anyway, although I've been working in the custom embroidery business for almost 12 years (wow that's scary), I've actively been involved in it since I was 10 years old when my mother, Dicksie Callen, started Callenstitch in our basement in Amherst, NH to service the burgeoning monogramming business.  She serviced companies like Carroll Reed, Jordan Marsh and Macy's with monogramming services on their towels, sweaters and woven shirts.  We moved to Concord, MA in 1985 and she got promoted upstairs to the play-room.  Then in 1993 she decided to sell the business and become a physical therapist but couldn't find a buyer.  I was in Aruba setting up a windsurfing shop when she called me in march 1994.  She told me she couldn't sell the business and was going to auction off the machinery unless I wanted to give it "a go".  I said I'd be home by the end of the week.

Once home, my father informed me that when it was my mother's business it could be in the house but since i was going to run it, goodbye free rent!  So, while i set up a crude database and answered phones, I also hunted for commercial space.  Once in our new shop in Acton, MA I went selling.  I thought i must be the best salesman ever cause everyone i saw wanted to do business with us. What I didn't realize was that my mother had created a great brand for herself over 13 years and any idiot could sell her good name.  Nevertheless, we were swamped and I had two phones going, was hiring production folks, buying new machines, etc.....BUT every time something screwed up on the floor i was calling my mother for help.  Coincidentally, she was finding out that working in health care for multiple managers wasn’t for her.  After 6 months or so she returned to “the floor” and I applied for business school.  I still did all the sales calls; in fact, one professor lowered my grade because I missed a class while presenting to our largest customer named CYRK!!!...i guess they can’t take academics completely out of ‘business school’ but this was crazy. Throughout my second year at Babson I began having grander thoughts of working in investment banking or consulting like every other b-school grad but after one interview my uncle set up for me on the junk bond desk at citigroup, I knew it wasn’t for me.  I wasn't good at 'sucking up' and it seemed that i wouldn't get far without that 'skill set'.  Anyway, I returned to the custom embroidery business shortly after I graduated from Babson.  Then we began to grow again mostly because this was late 1997 and the YA-YA 90's were just starting to heat up.  I was selling to all kinds of promotional product companies like Adventures in Advertising where I conducted tours through our facility explaining the fine art of embroidery and how to sell it.  Then a year or two later I realized that no matter how hard i tried I couldn't sell contract embroidery outside new england.  For some bizarre reason everyone thought they needed a 'local' embroiderer and I was done trying to convince them it didn't matter where your embroiderer was.

SO, that's when i came up with the idea for Corporate Casuals...Custom Embroidered Apparel--DIRECT.  Not a novel idea in those days cause everyone was riding the DOT-COM boom.  A friend of mine named Travis Warren had just launched his web development company Whipplehill with Peter Batchelder and agreed to put up our first website for little $$'s so they could build a portfolio.  Then I started writing a business plan and sending it out. no VCs were interested except a couple (i forget their names now). Only person who was really interested was a guy by the name of Walt Petersen from a company named Austin James (they sold the software program where you can create your own Iron-on design).  Turns out he was interested cause they were just about to launch Madetoorder.com and rake in $25-50m in vc money.  Branders.com and Starbelly.com got a ton of money too.  They all blew it and Starbelly even put HALO (a $600m promotional products company) out of business. Then I came up with a novel twist i thought.  We were going to create private label, online stores for companies and organizations for free.  This way they could jump on the ecommerce bandwagon (without actually doing anything) and we could get a foothold into their company provide all their corporate apparel needs.  Remember, Fidelity was buying millions in embroidered apparel each year and so were all the other mutual funds that are based here in boston.  So, I started marketing that and poured into landing these big clients while also running a contract embroidery shop.  I hired a family friend and then a sales guy...they were both a disaster.

Anyway, we had a good idea and a great web developer named jeff Kody building the framework for creating and running hundreds of online stores off of one platform.  Only problem was the customer.  most were very sceptical and all needed more convincing then anyone could handle.  Even through incedible contacts, folks said no cause they couldn't believe it was free.  Ecompanystore got $30+m in vc to do the same thing and failed. 

Then re-birth #4: we hired a great account exec named Kristen and I started buying keywords on google.  The phones started ringing and things picked up.  We created a new main site and plugged away.  Finally adding Cathy Davis (she's great too!) as another account exec.

Another year passed and then VistaPrint!  vistaprint.com was offering printed products to small businesses online with a design studio.  I knew we could copy the model for embroidery!  So i emailed Jeff Kody to see if he was interested in helping build a design studio.  He was but had just taken a new job and was off the market but he knew a friend that may be interested, chris haynes.  chris had worked in the industry for many years and for some hot companies.  he was interested...but took another job....bummer.....BUT then emailed me back a few months later that it wasn't working out.  Great for us.

Then we started mapping out the embroidery studio and found customink.com.  their design center for screen-printed apparel was just what we wanted but for embroidery.  You could design stuff on customink that could never be embroidered.  Plus customink only offered one color designs!  We wanted multi-color embroidery designs and an embroiderable file to come through with the order.  Chris suggested we work with the raw designs instead of just depicting them online.  I doubted it was possible and that’s when I pressed his buttons:  he loved to hear it couldn’t be done cause that just made it more challenging and valuable in the end.  He began dissecting Tajima files and a few short months later we launched the design center without a peep.  I think folks are still skeptical that you can order online without set-up charges and no minimums but thankfully Zazzle.com, SpreadShirt.com, CafePress and a few others pioneered the no minimum custom order theory.  So, we think it'll catch on.

Embroidery can sometimes be an oxymoron combining custom embroidery and production.  Folks at work have heard me say this a thousand times but its true.  the words don't work together (custom and production) and traditionally in business they have never worked on a large scale.  We hope to change that…at least for the custom embroidery business.