A Stitch or Two was founded in August of 2006. Jana worked for a large local health insurance company and Wade was a Firefighter/Paramedic. Jana’s company was sold to a really large health insurance company. As time went on, the reductions in force at Jana’s company was going strong. The handwriting was on the wall and we had to come up with a plan for when she lost her job.
A family member knew of an embroidery business that was thinking of selling. We talked with the owners and they gave us financials and the price they wanted for their business. Negotiations went back and forth until we got to a point where we had to walk away.
It was at this point we decided to start our own embroidery business. Wade would operate the business on his off days until Jana was released from her job. We did our research on equipment, business loans, taxes, corporations vs. LLC’s and most importantly, learn how to actually embroider. We got a business loan, purchased a commercial embroidery machine, took classes on embroidery and running an apparel decoration business. Our embroidery machine arrived and we were open for business.
After a year of embroidery and using heat applied vinyl we decided that we should add screen printing to the mix. Heat applied vinyl was good for short runs but for larger jobs it was very time consuming. Again, we did our research, took classes and purchased equipment. This was a good decision because during the summer month’s embroidery drops off and screen printing picks up and the reverse for screen printing.
As time went on screen printing really took off. We had a customer that would order 400-500 t-shirts every two weeks. We would be getting done with one of their orders and another was being placed. We would have to get caught up with other jobs that would come in before we could start their next job. This would cause us to get behind. This customer was becoming unhappy because we were getting behind with his orders. To avoid losing this customer a decision was made to purchase an automatic screen printing press. This allowed us to print more shirts faster. In 2016 we added an automatic press to our business.
We would like to thank all of our customers that have supported us over the years. Without you, we would not be here today.
By the way, Jana never lost her job and Wade retired from the fire department in 2022 and operates the business full time.