So, to anyone with eyes scanning this far, quit whenever you
wish. I’m okay with my web team being right. They are all great
people and have been right many times before.
IdentityStores started in 1986 as a small promotional products company, serving a local collection of teams, schools and businesses. I was a college student, who at the time, did not like statistics class and instead, wrote a business plan for a company I called, ChalkTalk.
ChalkTalk was a company designed around the scribblings of a popular football fanatic slash color-commentator named John Madden. Mr. Madden brightened sports TV with his maniacal scribbles over the top of video replays, showing where players were, where they weren’t and on occasion, funny things he saw that had nothing to do with football at all.
So, my sister and I created bright puff-printed shirts with football plays drawn out: Trap Draw, Screen Pass, Long Bomb were all part of our “playbook”. I dreamt of selling them in sporting good stores across the country. After sneaking into a Chicago trade show to black-market my ChalkTalk goods, I learned my dream took a lot more money than a college student could save. I learned the “pre-print” apparel market was guarded by people older and far wiser than me. I returned home to grow wisdom as best and as fast as I could.
I sold our ChalkTalk goods door-to-door to whoever would buy them. ChalkTalk, the business, quickly morphed into a promotional products company, selling pens, coffee mugs, mousepads and custom printed apparel to schools, teams and small businesses. I spent my days figuring out how to best service my clients and make sure they were getting what they need, when they need it.
After a few years, one person joined the team, then another, and another. ChalkTalk grew to a point where we were delivering national campaigns, delivering items and creating products that best supported our client’s needs.
Again hungry for “new” I took a chance on creating an internet technology when technology was just beginning. During this process, I found out what being a modern-day “pioneer” meant. It meant making your way across unturned land, alone and literally steps from being extinguished by one of many scary obstacles. It was lonely and exciting. It was rewarding and thankless.
After a year and a half of technology development, our “Online Spiritwear” platform was launched under our new company, “ SchoolIdentity.com.” We built our first public online store in August 2001 when few even knew what an online store was. Our online reach grew. We formed TeamIdentity, then BizIdentity. Then came FaithIdentity and CityIdentity, until we put them all together under IdentityStores, LLC.
Today, we have a team of IdentityStores people serving clients involved with schools, teams, associations, faith based organizations and businesses small and large. Today, everybody knows what an online store is and it seems, everyone has new and unique expectations to deliver.
Having a solution and providing a service that someone values who you’ve never seen, shaken hands with or shared a glance is awesome. And, because you can actually help them and provide a level of service others chose not to, makes you feel like you’ve created something worthwhile.
Running a company means trying to be on your game all the time. It means paying attention to what is going on around you. It means still caring a lot. But above all, it means surrounding yourself with incredibly great people, who care just as much and in some cases, more than you. Our employee’s and teammates have all been great people doing great things here at IdentityStores. These people are all part of a wider support network of family, friends, colleagues who validate and give this company purpose each and every day. I feel amazingly fortunate to have these people and these opportunities alongside me on this journey.
After having been tasked to share our IdentityStores insight with those interested, I’ll do my best to deliver. I cannot speak to the value of any of it. But, if nothing else, it gives me an opportunity to let you know a little bit about this business world and both its large and subtle impacts on the larger circle we live in.
There will be plenty of business tie-ins, tangents and things about the service industry I’ve found interesting. And, there will be snippets from experiences I’ve had coaching employees, athletes and my kids along with all sorts of things that intersect these paths.
And, eventually, I will get to “short and simple” because, it makes sense.
- John Michaelson