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News 12 Staff

spotlight113part2_2024-01-13-09-43-29

We are putting the spotlight on embroideries based in Jackson, Samantha Hills is the owner and founder Debbie Hills is her mom. Let's talk about what's involved in this operation because we're talking about a staff of what just uh it's really two people, three people with Cameron who does our outlines. But most of the time she, she helps with the outlines. Yeah, and we do have extra help with friends and family. But 90% of the time it is just me, my mom and Cameron on the outlines, which is, and then we have, of course my husband, he's actually, he's home on disability. He had back surgery about 23 years ago. So he's still recovering from that. He might have to have another one, but he actually, he'll like print stuff for us or fold. He does our folding because he folds everything, inventory things where he can fold. Somebody does a beautiful job here on the video. I'm looking, he folds everything. That's my dad, wonderful dad. After we put up the embroidery that actually um fam family friends that jumped in. Um We did a 5000 order. Little congratulations. Thank you to people that helped us was that your only sewing machine? So that's actually my sewing machine there. That was my bedroom. When I first started my business, when I first opened it up, the first machine I ever bought, I would just sit there and my bedroom and had my one little machine. And then eventually, after this video went viral, I had to go and I had to get another machine. And then luckily I was able to buy another machine and now I'm at four machines. And initially you wanted to hand stitch everything. Yes. So I actually tragic for me. I don't know what I was thinking. I was 18 at the time. So I thought, oh, I'm so creative and this is so cute. Um Because I first posted a video of my hand embroidering and that's what people said. I would buy something like this. I just didn't think there was gonna be a machine that would be able to do something so intricate and so detailed. Um And it's actually funny because when I first started doing things with the machine, I would still outline people's, I would print people's pictures out on a piece of paper, outline it with a sharpie, flip the paper over, outline it with a sharpie again, take a picture of that, upload it to a software and then I have to figure out the, turn it into stitches. But now I've realized why don't I just use my ipad. So now I take my ipad and I draw it on there and then I could just upload it into the software and it turns it into the stitches. So the process has evolved a lot. But it's taken off too, apparently worldwide. Yes, we do a lot of international. Excuse me. Um Norway Sweden, France, Slovak, Australia, United Kingdom, social media really gets it out there, which is nice. But since we've started, there's a lot of other people that have also started it too. So it has slowed down a little bit um the business because a lot more competition, competition now I did struggle with that when it first started happening. But I mean, there's a lot of scammers too. People, I feel bad people contact us and say, you know, we ordered a sweatshirt, they, it was our pictures, our everything and the sweatshirt they got was like, you couldn't even look at the picture because it wasn't even. And so then we would, you know, do a picture for them and send it, but it's just, and that was at the time when my business was going viral. So like on top of dealing with all the orders and the customers, I also had to deal with like this legal copyright with these scam companies, which was, it was just such a crazy time. Take a look. Two of our staffers, Grace Roland and Alison Plora fell in love with Samantha's clothing and at noon. She wants to talk more about those copycats and offer advice on making sure that you're getting the genuine merchandise.

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spotlight113part3_2024-01-13-16-52-01

We are back with Samantha Hills who was the owner and founder of embroideries and her mom, Debbie Hills. We are talking about the fact that you all have a lot of copycats out there. Now, how do people know that they're getting the genuine product from you? So it's, it's very hard with social media, especially tiktok. There are a lot of scams and just to assure that you are purchasing from us from embroideries, the real authentic product. Um All of my social media handles are the same. It's just embroideries. Um That is it. If you are on my social media is just embroideries, there's no underscores after there's no periods in the name, it's just the name and same thing with my website. It is just embroideries.com. There is no extra, extra anything in there. And when you get your sweatshirt too on the back, we actually iron on our embroideries tag. Um So all of our shirts have that, but it's really just make sure that you are shopping on embroideries.com. If you see something that says embroideries.com on another place, like another website that's not embroideries, then that's what it is. It's like even if it's a little underscore exclamation anything, it's not me arteries and people think that because they'll use Sam's pictures. Um, they'll post her, their products on the website on Tik Tok on social media and it's not her stuff and they'll see how beautiful it is. And then when they get the product it's not, nothing even comparable. We've had so many people contact us that they were scammed and it's, it's sad that people do that. So they're playing off your name. They're playing off the irritating and not by the way, I love to talk about this because when I first came up with a name for my business, everybody didn't like was it before? Oh, so before it was Merode, it was just embroidered by Sam because it was just me and I was doing everything. But then I was like, I want something unique and now it's, my family helps. I have friends and family. It's, it's just a bigger thing now. So I changed it to embroideries. And when I first said that everybody was like, what are you? What is that? That just sounds so funky. Nobody's gonna like that. Yes, because it's funky. You pay attention to it. Exactly. You remember it. And that's also what I was looking for. It's memories and embroidery. Memories embroidered embroideries. I love it. Who are all these people that you wanna give a shout out to that work with you. So we have a lot of family, friends that jump in all the time. Thank God we do. Um I could not do it. Yeah. Well, our one outliner which you'll see some videos and pictures of her is Cameron Weiss. I say her name right. Cameron. We, um, and she does mostly 75% of our outlines. We couldn't do it without her. She's three years with us. Um, so Cameron, you're the best my life. We have you. Yes, girl, we have family and friends that jump in. Uh, last Christmas we ended up doing about 1000 orders. Uh So we had a lot of my, my friends. So it's like moms to her, which was funny. Um, and a couple of their daughters and my neighbor Wendy, uh, she jumps in whenever I need her. She's here every night with us. She was here last night. She's here the night before she jumps in for anything. Her daughter mckenna helps out with, um, outlines mckenna is Samantha's childhood friend. Debbie says her husband and son also jump in to help tomorrow at 6 a.m. She also shares her background before working with the company.

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spotlight114part4_2024-01-14-18-29-38

We are having a good time here on spotlight New Jersey, talking with my guest from embroideries based in Jackson. Samantha Hills is the owner and founder, Debbie Hills is her mom and a hard working one at that. Oh, yes. Yeah. Put you into this Debbie. I did hospitality for about 35 years. Um And I missed a lot of the family Christmases birthdays. I was always working weekends evenings. I never saw my mom. Yeah. Never. And I love the business. I love dealing with people. But during COVID, um I got laid off because of everything going on. So I had the chance to go back. But then her video went viral and I've never went back since she jumped in since day one. How does your business differ from your competitors? So I think that my business is very from our competitors because if you look at the artwork online of a lot of these custom photo embroidered sweatshirts, I feel like you can just tell that our really pay attention to detail. I go in and quality check every single outline that Cameron does and if she doesn't draw it, I will draw it um I just am very specific with the outlines and we send every customer their outline for free of charge, we email it to them. Um So they see an email preview and we say do you like it or do you wanna make any changes? And they can make unlimited edits, they can do a new photo for $5. Um or they could say it's perfect. Good to go and then we embroider it. We are just a Cameron. Yes, that's my Cameron, that's my camera that does all of the outlines. Um But yeah, it is just a very detailed, intricate process. We make sure that we are like one on one with every single customer despite the hundreds and thousands of orders that we always have. Um Is there a return policy? Because this is a very detailed, that's tough. So what we do is because we do have a longer processing time because um it's just the amount of orders that we have. So, so what we do is no cancellations after 48 hours because after that 48 hours mark, it is uploaded into our app and Cameron is getting started on that drawing even before that really. But you know, we have so many orders. So it takes her a little while to get to those more recent ones. Um We want them to, we send them the outline because we want them to make sure they like it. Not when they get the sweatshirt, they're like, this doesn't look like me, you know, so we take that time to make sure they really like it. So we really don't get many, we don't really get asking for refunds or cancellations and piggybacking on what they're talking about at nine. Samantha and Debbie break down the whole order process for embroideries from start to finish.

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spotlight114part5_2024-01-14-11-02-26

Embroideries is the company we are talking about here on Spotlight New Jersey today, Samantha Hills is the owner and founder Debbie Hills is her mom. What is the whole process? Because this is custom work. What is the whole process involved from start to finish? So the very first step is obviously you go on to our website and you place our, your order. Um once your order is placed, our processing times are three weeks. So at around the two week mark, you'll get an email proof of your outline. So in that two week time frame, Cameron is working through a list of um it's, I actually have an app where we have every single photo uploaded all the files and Cameron goes through and she does every single one and then at that two week mark, um you'll get your outline there or before and then you email us back and say, I absolutely love this outline. Or can you make some changes to it? And we'll say, ok, we'll make those edits and send it right back to you or we'll be like, ok, your order will ship within a week if you confirm it and, and then that's that and you'll get the tracking number. So then after they confirm it, we go in and we have to hoop the shirts and then we have to put them into the machines. And then once the machine does all the embroidery, we take them out, we cut them, we have to cut stabilizer off the back and there's all these little extra threads that we have to trim that I make sure I trim every single tiny little thread. If you look at embroidery in like grocery stores and stuff, you'll see. They don't cut these tiny little threads in between the letters. I'm cutting everything. You will not see like that. Oh, yeah, you will not see a single stray thread. Sometimes I'll be like Sam, this looks fine. It does not, we gotta do it over and we'll have to do it over and I'll be like, are you sure? I can't even tell, I can tell she's really, that's the one thing she's really a stickler for detail. Is there any design you all can't do or? Yes, actually, we can't do copyrighted and trademarked. We've had a handful of people ask if we could do like a Disney character or uh something like that. And I can't do that. I just won't go into it because of legal things. It's just too risky and I, I mostly stick to the photo outline embroidery, but I have started doing filled in embroidery which is really cool. Um, that's kind of what we can't do too well right now because our machines are all single needle machines. Um, and they're not free arm where you can actually take like a sleeve and it goes into the arm so you could, you don't have to fold anything back and it just embroiders those machines and 10 needle machines to do all different colors cost 10,000 $15,000 And it's just something we're working towards getting. But right now we just have four single needle machines, but that's like our goal. And coming up at noon, Samantha and Debbie talk about their plans and new ventures for this year.

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spotlight114part6_2024-01-14-18-18-51

The mugs that you see here on the table are absolutely beautiful and well crafted. They are made by embroideries in Jackson, Samantha Hills is the owner and founder Debbie Hills is her mom. So here in 2024 this is a new thing to run with. Yes. So we actually wanted to get the mugs up in time for Christmas, but you know, a lot of trial and error and then Christmas got super busy for us. So now we have plans to launch these mugs in January. So right this month, actually, they should be, they should be coming out if they're not out already. Um And we can do just the outlines on the mugs. We can do the full, full filled in picture on the mugs. I'm kind of messing around with it still, but I'm very, very excited about those. I can see that you have other things on tap too as well. Yes. So I actually just came out recently too with the sweatpants, the hats, those are new and then in the new year, I also want to start doing matching sets. I tried to get that up for Christmas as well. Where I can sell like sweatpants with an anniversary date and then the picture on the chest, I thought that would be like a super cool thing to do. Um We also wanna eventually start trying to maybe do engraving like engraving necklaces and stuff in the New Year in the New Year chains, things like that. It's really nice because a lot of people from, they'll keep ordering from us from when they first got married to, when they have a baby to when. So we get so many returning customers. So we wanna try to keep getting new products and new things for, for them to get other than just sweatshirts and clothing. So that's why we always try to keep trying to do more. Who's the creative mastermind behind all this? Um I mean, I hate to, I mean, not to like, but I would say out of work looking into this and me and my husband were just like, how did she figure all this out still to this day? She do this. I'll be doing something on the computer and my dad's like, Samantha, how are you doing that? I don't understand how this works. This is just so crazy. It was, I, I had to do all the research because of course, I started with the hand embroidering. So I was like, what's the best way to do this? And then I had to go in and see which machines work best and which Softwares I should use and what's the best way to do this and marketing? What's the best way to do videos and push this kind of product out there making your own website? Oh, yeah. My website is completely made by me. I made my website all by myself. Um, I have no help with that. Uh, you're a multitasker. Um, I would say, yeah, I did a little bit of everything I tried. So, I mean, I would say I'm a multitask but to a, to a degree, I do a bunch of different things, but I wouldn't say I can do them. Well, at the same time that such your advice to somebody who wants to launch their own business. Um I say just really um celebrate your milestones because my biggest regret with my business is not celebrating my milestones, I will admit, um and enjoy every moment and you're gonna go through hardships and there's gonna be competition and you're gonna have self doubt, but just keep pushing through it because I've seen that I've pushed through everything that I thought that I can. And it is just really, I feel like a lot of people should think that you could push through more than you think that you can even when things are hard in business.

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When a video Sam post on TikTok went viral, sales went through the roof for her unique hand embroideries.

Spotlight New Jersey: Membroideries

When a video Sam post on TikTok went viral, sales went through the roof for her unique hand embroideries.

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