Servicing the Mid West
636-978-9782 or 636-448-1897
E-Mail - tesmas77@cs.com
Hello my name is Bill Thomas, and I Love Embroidery!
First thing that I want you to know is that , I am a student of this industry. I started out in this business as a machine operator in 1988 at St. Louis Embroidery, St. Charles, MO. After 4 years as an operator/ lead person, I started working on the machines learning to troubleshoot problems and make mechanical repairs, also worked production as shift supervisor, I was even loaned out to one of our larger customers as production manager in order to help get their embroidery operation off the ground.
The machine I trained on (by the way my wife Paula was the trainer and believe me she didn't cut me any slack) was a 3-needle 4-head Tajima, no trimmers, and the design was loaded by the way of paper tape, my oh my, how things have changed and yet how they have also stayed the same! I watched as we grew from 24 heads to over 200. We went thru some major changes, even to the point of adding almost double the floor space. The point being that, not only have I grown up in this industry, from a time when machines held only 3 colors, didn't trim, or back up more than 500 stitches to the present, but I was also there and very much involved in the growth of this company, from a small multihead operation to a very large one, 256 heads total. I was there as machines were added, the number of operators increased, thread inventories grew in size, I watched as we moved into the new addition and tried various layouts with the machines, thread storage, one operator per machine to operators working in groups. Many successes, many failures, but what a learning experience!!
Now I've had the privledge of working in many different shops from the small retail operations to the bigger contract operations, repairing their machines, talking shop with the owners and the operators, watching how production is ran, all this in order to learn more and in the process share all that have learned with whoever is willing.
