"It was clear that we had to expand the embroidery business and we researched all the production machines that were available. This research led us to Tajima and Hirsch International. We felt our best investment by far was a Tajima machine and that Hirsch having an office in Sacramento would provide the best service. Our instincts were right on... Tajima and Hirsch were terrific, so it was a natural step to purchase the second machine from Hirsch. We also needed software that could use the vector based art that our graphic artist produced. That led us to the Tajima-Pulse DG/ML software. I quickly moved from producing 2-3 designs per day with a 2 week backlog of to 5-7 per day and no backlog. The greatest value I have found with the Tajima-Pulse Designer version is that it is very similar to Adobe Illustrator and is easy to convert art into embroidery designs. It appears to be the most compatible software with screen printing type designs."
Tim Haig and his wife Cindy have run Designs On Apparel Custom Embroidery (DOA) in Loveland, Colorado for the past four years. Their goal was to create a growing business that would provide them with the income they needed after Tim's retirement from the fire department, where he has worked for 28 years. The business is split down the middle: Tim does the digitizing and Cindy is the technician/operator of the equipment. Cindy says that Tim credits her for getting him into a business he loves. "Fourteen years ago, Tim was working in the department and I was a home sewer in Key West. The first side business we got into was a fire extinguisher company (how fitting), and that was fine, until Tim was promoted to Fire Marshall." The promotion was detrimental to the business as all of a sudden Tim was a 9 to 5, five-days-a-week worker. "The business became too much, so we sold it and looked into a business that we could both work and enjoy. Embroidery was the natural move due to my background, and Tim's contacts.
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We went to the Las Vegas Embroidery Expo, looked at everything and chose Tajima due to its obvious quality craftsmanship. A particular quality we liked was the low noise compared to other machines. Also, Hirsch followed up with us so completely that we knew they would service us just fine." They chose a TEHX-C1501 and a NEO and love them. "They are great machines - we have never had a service person down to our shop, and the only time we did have a problem - which was during set up - the phone tech stayed with us until we had the problem solved. In fact, our experience was so great that we bought our NEO sight unseen." Today their business is "chaotic" with multiple contracts with fire and police organizations. "We just finished a mobile sewing job at a Firefighters School and have several more scheduled. We just load the 1501 and the NEO into the van and go. It's a great niche. Thanks to our contacts in the fire and police departments, as well as other civil service areas, Business couldn't be better. We're set for our after retirement lives."
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 Tim & Cindy, at their "real" job. |
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