Embroidery business wins JumpStart pitch competition
Apr. 4—As an embroiderer, Britney McSweeney needed a way to organize the hundreds of different thread colors she used in her artwork.
The thread is manufactured by DMC, a textile company, and different colors are randomly assigned numbers — even similar shades can have wildly different designations. So Ms. McSweeney designed an organizational system that would allow her to quickly identify exactly what she needs for a project and where it falls in DMC's color spectrum.
"When I created this, it was just for myself," she said.
But when she started posting photos of her artwork and materials, several commenters asked about her organizing system. And since then, Ms. McSweeney has turned it into a business, with 400 sales since launching in September, 2020 and recently winning JumpStart, Inc.'s Northwest Ohio Pitch Competition.
JumpStart is an organization with a local presence in Toledo that is dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs and economic development. Its pitch competition took place Tuesday evening.
"To be honest, I was very surprised I won," Ms. McSweeney said. "I was thrilled."
During the competition, Toledo-area small business owners had four minutes to pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges. The winner received $2,500, and each participant received at least $500.
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Other competitors included Mikhala Bagot, with Island Soul, LLC; Bob Buckland, with Morph's Props; Tisha Lee, with aMAYSing Kids; Zac Graber, with Opendemia; Tera Johnson, with Sweet Experience; Ashley Streichert, with The Authentic Co.; Amber Hawkins, with Your Computer Needs of Toledo, LLC; Justin Blanchard, with HedgeHog Health, and Lori Amison, with Lori's Green Clean.
Though Ms. McSweeney lives in Toledo, The Tidy Stitch doesn't have a physical location and exists at this point as an online business. Ms. McSweeney said her goal for using the prize money is to find a manufacturing partner and get into retail spaces.
"I would love to have a product in a Jo-Ann's or Michael's one day," she said.
Her products are currently available at www.TheTidyStitch.com.
Ms. McSweeney first started embroidery about 10 years ago. Back then, she was doing a lot of traveling, she said, and embroidery was a craft that was portable and kept her occupied.
"It was something to do with my hands when you're doing a lot of waiting," she said.
Ms. McSweeney operates The Tidy Stitch as a side business to her full-time job with Trinity Health in Michigan.
"I'm quite busy," she said, but quickly pointed out that she likes to be busy.
In the past five years, she has seen a kind of resurgence in needle art's popularity. While it got a boost during the past year from people being cooped up during coronavirus-related lockdowns and needing things to do, she said, that resurgence has been coming for a while.
For years, she said, people have been either coming up with their own organizational systems for DMC thread or living with the disorganization. While her product has been popular with many, she said, some have stuck to their own systems.
Ms. McSweeney finds the organization relaxing. Especially this year.
"For me, it's my source of calm in the rest of this pandemic chaos," she said.
