A discussion about the process, steps and options of starting a new business

A couple of years ago, Gina Halladay and Stephanie Goudzwaard both worked at their local quilt shop, helping out with customers, making sales, learning the quilting industry, when they realized that an opportunity existed to take their quilting skills, knowledge, and passion beyond just working at the quilt shop. They saw a demand in the quilting market for custom quilt designs & patterns and for help building quilts using a long-arm quilting machine. So, they found a store location in Brea, California, invested their money to buy a Gammill Statler stitcher machine, opened their doors, and thus the Threaded Pear Studio was born in Feb 2006.

Over the last 2 years, the “threaded pair” of Gina and Stephanie have focused on building their business (and juggling that with raising 6 kids between them). They aggressively attended and exhibited at all the major quilting tradeshows in the western US. They created a website with online store. They held promotions and extensively networked within the national and local quilting market. They taught quilting classes, designed their own quilting patterns, and built literally hundreds of quilts for customers. Their hard work has paid off—the business has expanded to become very successful, requiring 2 moves to new locations; Threaded Pear has has now settled in Yorba Linda, CA.

More recently, Threaded Pair has focused on creating original custom quilting patterns. It offers "unique and stunning" quilt patterns. Its first quilt pattern series includes 31 patterns under the name "Afternoon Delights”  - quilts you can complete in an afternoon or two. It also added a new series called “Comfort Quilts” this year and will also introduce a series of fashionable aprons next month at Quilt Festival. These quilt pattern series have been very popular and are distributed nationwide to quilt stores.

Stephanie and Gina are excellent examples of building a new business from the ground up. They concentrated and tried & true promotion methods of tradeshows, networking, and word-of-mouth, as well as newer promotion vehicles such as blogging (PearPieces.com and QuiltersBuzz.com). In the end, the quality of their quilting services and original quilting patterns are what keep customers coming back and keep the Threaded Pear growing.