HOW IT ALL STARTED Our company was founded in 2004 by our Owner & Operator Stephen Wilson, but his journey to start this company and build it into an industry leader began a decade before that. Back in 1994, Steve was 24 years old and working as an electrician with his father. He never felt like this was something he wanted to do, and decided to search for something more fulfilling. This is about the time he bought his first personal computer and thought, “There has to be a way to make money with one of these.” Having loved his graphics classes in high school, he got some graphics software and installed it on his computer. This led to the founding of his first business, Artbox Graphic Design. Now, you might be wondering when we get to the embroidery part. Well, a lot of screen printers Steve was working with started asking him about designing embroidery for clothes, which he had never done. At around the same time, Steve’s mother had attended a home embroidery party, much like a cooking, candle, or jewelry party. She came home very excited and told Steve, “I found what you are going to do next!” She explained how the demonstrator would show what he created, take orders, then deliver the finished goods a few weeks later. She said, “We can do that too!” Steve agreed, but quickly realized he had no idea how embroidery was made or where to get a machine. He then remembered all of the screen printers he worked with requesting embroidery and thought, there may be something to this. After a lot of searching, he finally found a distributor and made the trip to see what they had to offer. The distributor explained how the machines worked and told him how easy it was to use them at home. Steve leased his very first embroidery machine that day for a small fee of $24,000. That didn’t include any software, hoops, or accessories, and it had a screen that look like the face of a calculator. Once the machine arrived, Steve and his mom began giving home demonstrations and taking orders left and right for stock designs. Almost immediately they began getting swamped with requests for custom designs and logos. Seeing a great opportunity, Steve then told his mother, “I am going to create our designs. I am going to digitize!” So, after another visit to the salesman from whom he bought the machine, and going over all the options for digitizing, Steve signed another lease to became the proud owner of $50,000 worth of digitizing software. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Do you know what you do when you spend $50,000 on software? You spend every waking hour learning how to use it, and that’s what he did over the next few months until he finally created his first design and charged for his services.
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