May 10, 2023 Breakfast Meeting Notes

May 10, 2023 Breakfast Meeting Notes

 

Tony was absent today so no trivia. Steve has supplied us with Ukrainian trivia which will be presented next week.

 

50/50 was won by Mike, who donated the money to Tom’s tip Mike also won the chance to draw for the card game but his luck ran out, as he then pulled the queen of hearts.

 

Steve briefly Zoomed in from a border town in Ukraine, 5 hours from Kiev. 

 

We have submitted an application for the $400 District social media grant and it was awarded to us. Our Facebook page is down and we need to get it back. Danielle thinks that this may have happened because we had a QR code on the site. Our club website is still missing the form that community organizations use to apply for our support. Margaret LaBarge is working on getting this form back where it belongs. In the meantime Braden has a copy and he may just want to email a copy to everyone.

 

Our speaker today was Renee. She ran a medical equipment company for 25 years, and then lost her husband to a heart attack. She took a year off of work to rebuild her life. She started out by working in an embroidery company in Concord; she wanted to buy it but it was not for sale. Finally she decided that she would go into business for herself. 

 

The business is Tana’s Tees, named after her daughter Montana who is a two-time cancer survivor and who has faced numerous other health problems. Renee does the embroidery and her daughter does the screen printing. They are also looking into getting a laser burner so that they can do etching. The shop is at the corner of Route 175 and 3 and she opens at 7 am. Rotarians are invited to stop in any time to see the process at work. They will be expanding and are hoping to hire 4 people for the summer.

 

Typical things to embroider include hats, shirts and jackets, and tote bags. The machines stitch up to 1000 stitches per minute; Renee usually does 800 (600-650 for hats). They need to adjust the thread tension at the beginning of every week. Thread is ordered in 5500 yard spools from a friend of Moe’s.  She uses “a lot” of these every month, ordering from a friend of Moe’s. Each machine has 15 mounts for thread, so all colors are loaded up at the beginning. She has not yet had a design that required more than 15 colors! Every design has a center point. Left chest emblems should be centered 6 1/2 inches down from the shoulder seam. When embroidering a flag, stars always go forward towards the heart.

 

Her business has taken off; she is now the official embroiderer for the state police, liquor commission, and other state agencies. The state goes in “waves” so there are busy times and then quieter times. Individuals can also use her services. Customers provide her with a design, such as their logo, and  she sends the design out to be digitized. Once the design is in digital format, she does a small “sew-up” as a mockup. Some of these designs have a lot of detail. You can go to her Facebook page to see a video of a hat being embroidered. There is no minimum order size for embroidery; 12 items per ink color is the minimum for screen printing. They are looking to hire 4 people for the summer. 

 

The scholarship committee decided on 12 winners; they asked the board for additional $2000 for the 2 extra students and it was approved. Sharon will get a nice award certificate printed and give the winners an invitation to speak at our meeting between Christmas and New Year’s.

 

Bill needs to find out if we have RYLA students for this year.

 

Sharon thanked Ken, Nancy, Tony, Lora, and Peggy for their work on the scholarship committee. We had 42 applicants. She also had a happy dollar; they have finally moved into their new house in Bridgewater. She was late so she put in a dollar for that as well.  Her house in Plymouth will be going up for sale soon. It is 1300 feet and it’s on a half acre lot, with apple and pear trees, blueberries, gardens, grapes, and an adjacent rental property.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Lora Miller, secretary