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Norcross business celebrates 30 years of patches
If you're wearing a baseball cap, it's pretty likely that World Emblem had a hand in making it. In 30 years, the family business in Norcross has grown from nothing into the world's largest patch manufacturer.
NORCROSS, Ga. - You may not know World Emblem in Norcross, but you've definitely seen their work.
From major sports teams to the Little Leagues, the family-run factory has done it all.
"If your kid is wearing a cap, there's a pretty good shot that World Emblem had a hand in it," COO Jim Kozel says.
Inside the walls of the Norcross manufacturing center is a combination of technology and skills that churns out order after order for everything that needs personalization.
The center is responsible for personalizing hundreds of thousands of hats and garments.
"On the caps and the direct embroidery side, we do thousands of garments a day," Kozel says. "On the name emblem side, we do more than 50,000 a day to ship to our customers."
Now 30 years old, the family business is the world's largest patch manufacturer.
"It started out as nothing and built into something huge," Kozel said.
Completing a last-minute order in a pinch is just part of the process.
"We had a customer come up to us with Augusta National. And the caps they were selling were missing the embroidery showing they were Augusta National brand. They needed it done overnight. They literally dropped off 750 visors," Kozel said, "We had them done the next day."
In just a half hour, the team had created personalized caps for the Good Day Atlanta crew.
"It's about 15,000 stitches. It's already been digitized. We put it on the machine and started laying the groundwork for ya," Kozel said,
He said the COVID pandemic was a "game-changer" for the company and proved that "you don't have to go to China to get stuff decorated at a reasonable price and get it out in the marketplace."
You can learn more about World Emblem on the company's website.