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A Forsyth County printing and embroidery company has a plan to keep their employees working while supporting other local businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Officials with Advanced Embroidery, located at 5815 Steeplechase Lane Ste. 200, recently announced a new collection of T-shirts called "Local Love" to promote local businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We're a small company here in Forsyth, and we employee 12 people here,” said co-owner David Marsden. "Obviously, business has gone way down because of the coronavirus, so we were trying to come up with a way to keep our staff working and also do our part to help the community.”
The project started a little over a week ago, and already 175 t-shirts have been sold, raising $3,500 in donations for local businesses and nonprofits, such as CASA of Forsyth County, Community Cup, Dutch Monkey Doughtnuts, Lake Burrito and Marie's Italian Deli, as well as the Forsyth County News.
“We made a relatively affordable T-shirt of $25 and being able to donate $20 to each local sponsor,” Marsden said. “The $5 cost covers the cost and keeps our guys working, and $20 goes to our community because everyone's hurting so bad from this coronavirus.”
To give the tees a common theme, all the shirts are charcoal-colored with the company's name in light gray and the "Local Love" logo on the back.
“We just kind of had that so everybody is the same but different,” Marsden said. “Hopefully, as the project picks up, people will start wearing them, taking pictures, post them online and say, 'Oh, that one looks like mine, but I bought one for 'Cue Barbecue, I didn't know Dutch Monkey Doughnuts was an option. I want to go support them as well.”'
After seeing another company undertake
a similar project in Missouri, Marsden said employees said they
wanted to have their own project for Forsyth County businesses and
non-profits.
“We said, 'Where are the places we go that we want to make sure are taken care of?'” he said. “Everybody in the office here kind of picked out what their favorite locals places were, and that's how we started, then there's a link on the website for anyone who wants to suggest somebody new that we might not be aware of or needs some help out there.”
One local business has already been added to the list, Music Authority, which has been a big seller so far.
“They raised almost $1,000 in one day after someone suggested we add them to the website,” Marsden said. “They sold over 50 T-shirts in a 24-hour period.”
Shirts can be ordered at Embroidery.net/collections/local-love and more information on the company is available at Emboridery.net.