May 8, 2017

Meet Lisa Powers of Embroidered Impressions in Buford

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Powers.

Lisa, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Embroidered Impressions is located in the heart of beautiful Buford, GA just a few blocks from Buford City Hall. First established in 1992, Embroidered Impressions has been creating professional embroidery designs for over 24 years.

The business has grown from a single embroidery head to over 50 sewing heads serving both wholesale and retail customers. In 2001, Embroidered Impressions added digital printing on both light and dark shirts to its services.

Embroidered Impressions continued to grow over the years necessitating our move into our current 10,000 square foot warehouse, manufacturing and retail showroom facility. Each month we produce over 18,000 embroidery items plus thousands of digital and screen printed items for our customers not to mention all the promotional products we produce.

In 2008, we added custom rhinestone designs and in 2009 we brought on bridge laser work and we now offer a full range of appliqué, reverse appliqué and distressed appliqué and embroidery techniques. We etch fleece and polyester apparel to create a truly one of a kind and unique effect. We can also custom etch wood to create beautiful custom cutting boards and other personalized wood items

We also offer sublimation as one of our many diverse techniques, as well as other creative and colorful techniques and designs. We dye sublimate smaller items of both hard and soft goods and this really expands the possibilities of our completed apparel, promotional items, gifts and decoration methods. 2013 brought sparkling sequin designs and fabulous glitter apparel with no minimum order required.

All our work is performed right here in the United States by our dedicated staff of local professionals. Our staff has an average tenure of 8 years with us and an average experience level of over 10 years.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
As with all businesses, when the economy rises and falls so does sales and we knew that we had to diversify as much as possible to broaden our customer and design technique base. This has allowed us to avoid some of the major downturn we experienced in 2008 and 2009 when the economy took a major fall. Having a diverse customer base in both the wholesale and retail embellishment businesses has smoothed out some of the bumps along the way although the business is still cyclical and we have our slow times like anyone else. The key to getting past those slow times has been in improving efficiency to be able to continue to offer quality products and services in an overly competitive industry. Our creative graphic design team is always striving to create something new and unique.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
The company has been locally owned since its beginning in 1992. Our main business is custom embroidery but we offer almost every design technique available for apparel embellishment including screen printing and laser etching. We have a large commercial embroidery facility that specializes in high quality embroidery at reasonable prices. We enjoy the wide variety of customers from local businesses to national conglomerates. We especially enjoy the work we do for the Georgia film industry and celebrities like Chase Elliot and a shirt we designed for the 69th birthday party to be presented to Sammy Hagar. Some of the best stuff we do is the custom designs we do to make a special occasion really unique by creating that one of a kind memory. What really sets us apart is the ability to handle everything from one custom embroidery design to 20,000 work uniforms. Our local production facility puts money back into the community and we love to sponsor and donate to some of the local schools and charities. We especially enjoy helping out local churches, missionaries and those in need by donating and discounting our merchandise and services. Our production facility runs 22 hours a day 5 days a week to meet our client’s critical timelines. Doing business with integrity, ethics and clear values while being a blessing to others is what we are all about.

What were you like growing up?
I was raised in the south so good manners, hard work and ethical values were something I grew up with that seem to be in desperate need these days. Putting the effort in to do things right and giving all you have to get the job done correctly and on time is important to me and our team. I started working helping my Mom out in a friend of ours bookkeeping department in my early teens and that taught me the value of hard work and paying attention to the details because if we were a penny off then we had to stay until everything was reconciled. I enjoyed sports and played competitive soccer and volleyball all through my early years and that helped me develop a competitive attitude but we learned that good sportsmanship and playing fair was just as important as winning.

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