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Meet the 20 people who are shaking up the decorated apparel market with their
Randy Carr
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The One-Suit Wonder: Randy Carr

Randy Carr's start-up embroidery firm, World Emblem International (asi/140730), has gone from a 21-year-old's dream in 1993 to an Inc. 5000 company with 600 employees on multiple continents and a successful uniform rental business. The Florida-based company's boss lives in Miami, wears flip-flops to work, owns one suit and listens to Guns N' Roses.

  • Randy Carr
    The One-Suit Wonder: Randy Carr

    Randy Carr's start-up embroidery firm, World Emblem International (asi/140730), has gone from a 21-year-old's dream in 1993 to an Inc. 5000 company with 600 employees on multiple continents and a successful uniform rental business. The Florida-based company's boss lives in Miami, wears flip-flops to work, owns one suit and listens to Guns N' Roses.

  • Jill Valentino
    The Fundraiser: Jill Valentino

    Friends compare Jill Valentino to the Energizer Bunny because she just goes on and on with minimal sleep. Her company, Lincroft, NJ-based Appleback Embroidery (asi/123011), created one of the most successful fundraising programs around for sports organizations, but she somehow finds time to work for local rescue squad and feed her TV addiction.

  • Lee Caroselli
    The Embroidery Olympian: Lee Caroselli

    Lee Caroselli did what nobody else could do. The co-owner of Balboa Threadworks in Palm Desert, CA, found a way to produce a workable embroidery design for the 1994 Elvis Presley stamp with just six cones of thread. Her Japanese counterparts, widely considered the world's best, had to scrap their own designs that used 28 cones.

  • Cory Dean
    The Major League Artist: Cory Dean

    Cory Dean turned his parents' $25,000 loan into a $10 million company. Artwork Source of Tacoma, WA, has 80 digitizers and 40 vectorizers and is a 24-7 digitizing operation. On the side, Dean serves as a referee for Major League Soccer, having spent nine seasons as an on-field ref for the top professional soccer league in the U.S.

  • Joyce Jagger
    The Embroidery Coach: Joyce Jagger

    Joyce Jagger is one of the most in-demand trainers in the embroidery business. She offers clients a website with more than 150 videos, monthly webinars, live phone chats, enewsletters, blogs and a new book, The Truth About Embroidery Business Success. She spent 20 years running an embroidery business before selling it in 1998 when she hit retirement age and becoming a trainer. "I eat, sleep and drink embroidery," Jagger says.

  • The SEO Whiz: Jeff Taxdahl

    Jeff Taxdahl has defied the national recession. Thread Logic, his Jordan, MN-based embroidery business, posted 25% growth in revenue to $1.1 million last year, continuing the consistent double-digit increases that began when he started the company in 2002, a year after he was laid off from his marketing management position.

  • The Thinker: Ted Stahl

    Ted Stahl has refurbished and raced tugboats, produced concerts and beauty pageants, and developed several engraving businesses, but he's most known for heading a global group of companies producing apparel decorating systems and supplies. He prides himself on innovations at GroupeSTAHL, and it's helped turned the family business into an international presence.

  • The Memory Man: Jerry Decker

    Jerry Decker's digital designs have been described as "leave-you-speechless work" by his boss at Stitch Designers (asi/741145) in Louisville, KY. People noticed. He once embroidered a purse for the queen of England, and his embroidery designs have been used on blankets for horses at the Kentucky Derby, the most famed sporting event in his state.

  • The Cool Teacher: Dana Zezzo

    Dana Zezzo says he chooses "to walk on the edge of the cliff," and so far, he hasn't fallen off. The feisty educator with the "Bulldog" nickname works as vice president of sales for Pro Towels Etc. (asi/79750), and his specialty is teaching new ad specialty salespeople and decorators how to sell.

  • The Magician: AJ Ahmed

    AJ Ahmed once had a customer ask to make her pretty. He's no plastic surgeon, but considering he was working with images, he actually had a chance. The senior digitizer at Quality Punch in Torrance, CA, has been in the business for 10 years and gained a reputation for touching up images just right.

  • The Yin and the Yang: Jerilee and Jim Auclair

    Jerilee Auclair sells hemp bags and embroidered handmade paper. Her husband, Jim Auclair, saves embroiderers in trouble by fixing their damaged machines, and he invented Hook Wash, a cleaning oil for machines that's safe for electronics. The couple's respective companies, Black Eagle Designs and Fixyourstitch Embroidery, have been changing the market with their innovations in Vancouver, WA.

  • The Mentor: Melanie Coakley

    Melanie Coakley says, "There's not enough time in the day to do everything I want to do," but she tries to do it anyway. Between running her Chattanooga, TN, business, Embroidery FX, overseeing the commercial division of Floriani Products, and giving lectures around the country, she's a bit short on time, but she says, "I absolutely love what I do."

  • The Neuro-Physiologist: Brian B. Ferguson

    Brian B. Ferguson has this embroidery business, but on the side he likes to save lives. The surgical neurophysiologist has worked in Baltimore's University of Maryland Medical Center for 15 years, monitoring patients' nervous systems for any problems during surgery. Meanwhile, his Willowtree Embroidery of Parkville, MD, decorated caps for the health-care industry.

  • Jenni Cox: The Good Neighbor

    Jenni Cox, a former embroidery shop owner, co-founded Kent, OH-based National Network of Embroidery Professionals with her parents, Susan and Arch Ritchie, in the early 1990s after they saw there was no real infrastructure in the commercial embroidery business. Now, the NNEP actively serves 1,200 embroidery businesses with trade shows, education, online services and more.

  • The Fine Artist: Geri Finio

    Geri Finio views embroidery as art, and she treats it that way when she creates and sells her work at Studio 187 in Moorestown, NJ. "Stitchers need to bring embroidery back up to an art form," Finio says. Picasso, Cezanne, even Mozart? All inspire her work, as do embroidery traditions dating back hundreds or even thousands of years.

  • The Design Master: Michael Savoia

    Michael Savoia got his start working as a salesman in a West Hollywood, CA, showroom and after spending sometime there, decided he could do that kind of work. So he did. Today he runs Villa Savoia Inc., a pillow, embroidery and hand-beading company. His work can be found in various places, such as Frank Lloyd Wright's famed Hollyhock House in Los Angeles.

  • The Young Upstart: Howard Potter

    Howard Potter spent his teenage years in a home for disadvantaged children, but that didn't stop him from building a successful business. He launched A & P Master Images in 2003 at age 22, and today his Yorkville, NY, business has about 400 clients, ranging from hospitals and colleges to Walmart distribution centers and a major local radio station.

  • The Big Man on Campus: Mark Bender

    Mark Bender has changed the way people obtain varsity jackets. His Tacoma, WA, company, LettermansClub.com, is essentially an e-commerce site that lets clients design their own jackets. The high-end jackets, which cost anywhere from $350 to $800, are customized for each buyer and fit the nostalgia market perfectly.

  • The Multitasking Medievalist: Erich Campbell

    Erich Campbell can build your website, embroider whatever you want or translate Beowulf from Old English. The award-winning digitizer and online marketing wizard for Black Duck Inc. (asi/140730) in Albuquerque, NM, has extended Black Duck's reach with a variety of online social networking tools and designed its website, which is renowned for its comic book super hero theme.

  • The Digitizing Cheerleader: Neville Appanna

    Neville Appana wants to change the way the embroidery industry works. The South Africa-based digitizer for E-Fect has launched a side project with programmer Saeed Shekari called I-Cliqq Embroidery Software, with hopes of filling the gap between manual and computerized design. Though it's still a work in progress, Appanna's fans await its spread across the globe.

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