here are few more demanding professions than being a firefighter or a police officer. Besides the obvious aspects of protecting the public and in some cases, saving lives, everyday involves the stress of being a "go-to-person", within a community. It's no wonder that many choose to retire at a young age. But what happens next? Here are two examples of how a cop and a fireman chose to set themselves up for retirement... each with an embroidery business, fueled by Tajima.
Daniel Schmidt is the owner of Crystal Clear Logos, Inc. (www.crystalclearlogos.com) in Antioch, California. He has also been a Police Officer for 20 years (SWAT, Detective and Motor Cycle Patrol.) As his career progressed, he and his wife Crystal (a Physical Therapist) realized that a logical move would be to have a small business that would supplement the couple's retirement, and perhaps give them something creative and useful to do. Daniel explains, "Initially we decided on screen printing, after speaking with friend in uniform sales. We purchased some used equipment and attended the long Beach ISS to gain an education. It was there that we first learned about embroidery, and as we made screen printing designs for our customers, many asked about including embroidery with their order. At first we started contracting with a local embroidery company to digitize and sew. But as our business grew we decided to add this to our shop. Our first step was to purchase a single head machine and a digitizing program to learn how to digitize our own designs. Within a year we created more work than a single head machine could produce daily." Dan's company grew quickly by gaining customers from a broad range of corporations, institutions and local business and of course through his contacts did a lot of work for the local police, fire and medical agencies. His business has expanded across the U.S., to HawaⅡ and in fact, some products have traveled world wide with military and contact workers. |
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Ex-Police Officer and Current Embroidery Expert