It’s funny how things happen in life sometimes. How an idea can turn into an opportunity at the drop of a hat…when you least expect it. As I sit here planning for the Mother’s Day weekend ahead, and the sixteenth anniversary of my first business, The Button Lady, I find myself reflecting on how that business started and how it led to starting this business. It’s a story that some may know, because I’m proud to tell it.
Seventeen years ago my love affair with Warren Township and our beloved mascot, the Blue Devil, began. Well, to be honest, the love affair started sixteen years ago when the football program changed from the Gagewood Packers to the Warren Township Blue Demons. Being a lifelong Chicago Bears fan I was none to happy to be cheering for the “Packers!” If you know me, then you would consider this a more than valid statement! 🙂
I was so proud of my little man…he was a BEAST on the Warren Township football fields…a true athlete. So proud that I wanted to scream it to the world, so I made a button with his name and number on it and wore it proudly to all practices for about a week when one of our team moms asked me where I got the button and I told her I made it. After hearing that she offered me $1.00 a piece to make one for each kid on the team. Sure I would…it would pay for the button maker I had bought!
I told the story to my friend, Donna, who was I was team mom with the year prior, and she promptly ordered them for her team and encouraged me to go to the team mom meeting and offer them to all of the players. Long story short…I sold over 1,000 buttons without even trying to other proud moms in the Warren Township football and cheerleading programs. One thousand buttons! Wow! What would happen if I tried? So the next year I went out and tried and sold 5,000 buttons!
That next year led to some referrals, that let to me being invited to sell buttons at a cheerleading competition in Antioch…and the rest, as they say, is history. Now a sixteen year history being one of the area’s pioneers in cheerleading vending, and sixteen years of making friends and building relationships with other proud parents of athletes.
All because I was a mother who was so proud of her son and wanted everyone to know it.
I continued selling at competitions…kept my day job…and went back to school to learn what I needed to run a business. Fast forward to 2004 and Designs On You became a reality with the support of all my Warren Township, and cheerleading, friends and customers…and we haven’t looked back.
You can thank the cheerleaders of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin for our focus on super-cute spiritwear. After being disappointed year after year with the woman’s selection of spiritwear at the township, I really started to notice the cute stuff all of the cheerleaders were wearing. They were so spirited and cute…and in their colors! At that time if apparel was geared towards the women, and it rarely, if ever was, the only thing they’d do is put it on pink and think it was great. Sorry…the pink was gross and THAT’S NOT OUR COLOR!!
Our goal became to find super-cute stuff in team colors that any girl, young or old, would be happy to wear…excited to wear…and I think we’ve done a pretty exceptional job.
The ladies of Lake County can thank that one little beast on the football field boy, for sporting the cutest spiritwear around!
All because he called me Mom…
Happy Mother’s Day everyone!
Your Logo Done Here 