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.