About Cory Dean and ArtworkSource.com

Before: After graduating from college, University of California, Berkeley, I rejoined the family trophy business. All of our customers were small clubs and organizations that always had the worst scans and sketches for art. Since I was skilled at Corel Draw I got to clean all the crud. We could never charge what it really cost to do this service but couldn't with good conscience print what they provided. After a few years of this I realized a focused service that priced it low and turned it around fast could be very helpful to others. So I borrowed $25,000 and left the family business to start Artwork Source.

The start: I started selling to all the local distributors that used our family business for contract embroidery. I grew fast by word of mouth especially from the local Press A Printers. We now sell all across the world but our highest concentration is still in the Seattle/Tacoma area. We went from a few people who worked day and night to over 100 people that work 3 shifts a day.

Adding Embroidery: A few years ago I bought the 4 head embroidery machine from my parents' business and started a contract embroidery business. Shortly after I offered embroidery digitizing. In almost 2 years I ordered 50 brand new Tajima MX heads, 8, 8, 8, 6, 6, 6, and 8 one head sampling machines for digitizing stitch outs. Seams like every time the Tajima Salesman comes by we buy another.