Chris Colotti's Blog Thoughts and Theories About… 
Many people know me from my twenty year plus IT career and the last almost 9 years at VMware. That has provided a lot of connections throughout the community for sure. What many people may not know is that I have spent a great many nights and weekends help my wife Julie build her company from something that started as a craft show business into what seems to be growing year over year. It’s growing in many ways because of her passion for doing what she does, and in no small way due to the people that know me in the community. I wanted to say thank you and just explain a little about what it is she does for those that may not know.
A Brief History of StitchTek Services, LLC
Her small business started just over five years ago back in New Hampshire. She left her job to try something new. The idea was to make items for sale at as many craft shows as she could get into. At the time she we had purchased her a home user style embroidery machine with one needle, one color at a time. Very cool machine since you could connect it to a laptop, so that got my interest! You have to understand Julie has been sewing since she was seven so this was something she always wanted.
She began doing some work for a few vExperts and VMware Certified Design Experts that reached out to have some custom shirts done. Fast forward to moving down to Tennessee where she brought that machine with her and started doing more things for you community folks and locally. The challenge was she started getting asked for caps, bags, and other things that she could not do on the small machine.
StitchTek Services, LLC Embroidery
We collectively made the decision to upgrade her to a real deal commercial machine. Let me tell you this thing is a piece of machinery. It’s got a computer controller built-in running Linux, and 15 needles for different colors and weighs over 150 pounds. It’s had the ability to add caps and bags to what she did for all of you. Things took off! People asked for more items, and even the VMware User Group HQ started working with us. Let me tell you that logo cannot be done on a machine with ONE color at a time! Since then she has added another one of those beasts to double her productivity.
What StitchTek Services, LLC is now
As of today many things have changed and she’s added basic Screen Printing, Special FX Screen Printing that the folks at Nexenta even ordered for VMworld this year. She also has a massive line of EVERY promotional product you can imagine from USB drives to folding tailgate chairs. So why am I tell you all this and what is my role in all of this?
Those nights and weekends were spent and still are spent as her accountant and It support. I’ve helped put in systems and cloud based applications to help make her more efficient as a small business. I’m going to actually post a blog about those things as I think they are very interesting and have made a great many things more automated.
Finally I personally wanted to thank all of you that continue to spread the word of what she does and support her small business. You may even start seeing some animated Facebook ads and LinkedIN ads soon. At this point her goal is to simply get more corporate business and people to continue giving her the opportunity to at least provide quotes. So at the end of this all comes a small ask or two.
- If you are on social media please follow and like her channels on those outlets you prefer. You don’t need to follow on all, but these are listed in order of the ones she uses most currently.
- Be sure to check out all the photos of work and videos on the Facebook Page. You may just like what you see
- Please keep sharing what she does! Re-tweet, share, comment, and tell her what you like and don’t like.
- Finally, Contact Her if you have requests of your own. Although some things have minimum orders due to the custom nature, ask anyone she’s done work for and posted reviews on you will get the best work done.
Thank you again to all of those that have supported her in this effort, I truly cannot say thank you enough and tell you what it means to her to be part of such a large community. See you all at VMworld 2016 and be sure to watch her videos on all the items to look at for there. Most notably will be the Nexenta Booth Tee Shirts!
