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Article: Personalized gifts grow into unusual enterprise; Sales are made largely to corporations seeking one-of-a-kind items for awards.(BUSINESS)
- Article from:
- Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
- Article date:
- June 14, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Star Tribune Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The business that almost ate Hillary and Dan Feder's St. Louis Park home started innocently enough in 1989 with Hillary creating personalized gifts for her two small children and those of friends and relatives.
There were T-shirts on which she painted flights of balloons, each containing a letter of the child's name. For the older youngsters of friends, she bought picture frames, photo albums, even acrylic clipboards, which she customized with her imprecise paintbrush.
"I can't even draw a circle," she confessed. "I had to make a template just to draw the balloons."
Nonetheless, demand for her unique gifts quickly generated a business that by ...