Former hospital owner tires of stock-watching, so he buys a business he knows nothing about and
makes it work.
By Greg Stiles, Mail Tribune

Jim & Leslie Smith
Jim Smith admits he was spending too much time tracking the ups and downs of the stock market and not having enough fun in his retirement. So the 63-year-old golfer and former owner of Southern Oregon Medical Center in Grants Pass rejoined the work force after eight years off. Instead of tracking health insurance news and medical trends, Smith and his wife, Leslie now operate an embroidery shop on Parsons Drive in Medford.

The Smiths purchased Mountain Monograms from Susan Reynolds in Macdoel, Calif., south of Klamath Falls, early this year for upwards of $200,000. They moved three sewing machines and one veteran machine operator to Medford and opened shop in February. “Jim pretends like he’s the owner of a football team, I’m the general manager and Stacy is the quarterback — our production manager,” says Leslie Smith.

The Smiths had lived in the northeastern Oregon town of Wallowa several years before a desire to be closer to their kids during the holidays turned their attention back to the Rogue Valley. Pulver and Leever agent Bill Pritchard suggested they check out Mountain Monograms, which was on the block. "The initial challenge for Jim and I was to learn the business," Leslie says. "It was something very foreign to us — like machines that sew? I do sew, but nothing like this. We’re still learning." Once they moved — a four-head sewing machine fell off the truck in Medford during the transfer from Macdoel — the first order of business was to secure the existing client base in the Klamath Basin and three Northern California counties built over the past 13 years. Long-distance customers are significant as well. Heavy equipment manufacturer Nortrax, 40 percent owned by John Deere, is the largest account. Mountain Monograms also does embroidery for Hearst Castle and Columbia Forest Products. "Thank goodness for the Internet," Jim Smith says. "We can do design work and communicate it on the Internet and fax." Mountain Monograms uses a variety of catalogs, including a 166-page apparel edition. Its 10-day to two-week turnaround time is a plus as it seeks to broaden its base.

The company has two six-head sewing machines, including a new $65,000 Tajima brand sold and serviced out of Los Angeles, the ill-fated four-header that has since been returned to working order and a single-head machine in its 3,000-square-foot plant. The process begins by ironing the article or garment. It’s then "hooped" and the logo is centered and placed on the machine. After the embroidery work is done, the work is trimmed and detailed, checked and re-checked, steam pressed, packed and delivered. Jim Smith now estimates sales of between $550,000 and $600,000 during the first 12 months of operation. Revenue has been good enough to allow the company to offer health insurance starting Nov. 1. "I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel, because (sales are) significantly beyond what I had anticipated," he says. "We installed a health insurance program to recognize our employees for their efforts. It’s something I dreamed we might be able to do in a couple of years." Jim Smith,
who has won both regular and senior men’s Southern Oregon Golf Tournament championships, sees hats and shirts as the perfect way for a start-up company to extend brand awareness. "It’s a relatively inexpensive way to get exposure through use of their logo in public on hats, shirts, aprons, tote bags, jackets — basically you can put a logo on anything.

He recalls a Klamath Falls welder who has been operating for more than 30 years and grew his business largely through the distribution of hats. "He’d get a dozen or so hats in the early 1970s and basically that was his only advertising," Smith says. "He started making a huge hat order every year, because people were coming to get those hats. Unknown to them, they’re advertising his service everywhere they go." He spent much of Thursday delivering orders in the Klamath Basin, enjoying his comeback in the business world. "I want to warn other people to make sure they look at the other side of the retirement hill," Smith says. "To stay real healthy you have to have something on your mind, a passion in your heart in something you believe so strongly in to be involved in each day. For a few years, I had way too much Dow Jones on my mind and it didn’t work for me. "I get up each morning to a positive day where I have definite duties to fulfill and that’s so important. God is good — I had no idea I could have this much fun.”