Donna Zahn has been busy in the year since she traveled to upstate New York to The Embroidery Coach’s training center for an intensive embroidery business boot camp. (Zahn was the focus of Wearables’ Nov/Dec 2017 “Can This Embroidery Shop Be Saved?” feature.)

Last spring, the owner of Orcas Island Custom Embroidery in remote Eastsound, WA, was contemplating shuttering her one-woman shop, as she struggled to pay her bills. After working with Embroidery Coach Joyce Jagger, however, Zahn's business is booming: She's doubled the footprint of her shop floor – from 600 square feet to almost 1,200 – hired several employees and drastically increased her order volume and profits.

“It’s insane,” Zahn says. “I’ve done in the last three months what I used to do in a year. … I literally went from making $3,000 a month to times where I process $73,000 with the bank over just three days.”

The feat is particularly impressive since the winter months have typically been Zahn’s slowest. Business generally picks up during the island’s tourist season, when Zahn’s regular customers would order embroidered apparel to stock their gift shops. In the last year, however, Zahn was able to nab several juicy contract jobs, handling the decorated-apparel and promotional product needs for a major utility on the island as well as a resort lodge in Utah.

With tourist season rapidly approaching, Zahn has also taken a proactive stance, creating spreadsheets outlining orders from the last five years, then sharing them with her regular clients. “I actually went and talked to a lot of my customers on the island,” she says. “I anticipated what they would probably order and what time they would need it by. I’m more prepared for what’s going to happen.”

For example, a shellfish farm she works with typically orders 500 hats over the summer, starting with 150 in May. Instead of waiting for the client to come to her with a frantic, last-minute Memorial Day order on May 24 – as has happened in years past – Zahn suggested the client place the first order in April, giving her plenty of time to complete it.

Zahn attributes her newfound success directly to the lessons she learned during and after Jagger’s boot camp, particularly the importance of organization and scheduling. Raising her prices and improving the quality of her work, thanks to Jagger’s tutelage, were also contributing factors. “I don’t know how I did it before,” she says. “How did I even stay in business before without doing what I do now?”

Jagger, for her part, is proud of her student. “She has taken everything that I’ve taught her and made it work,” she says of Zahn. “She definitely is a very professional embroiderer.”