We make pins and magnets!
Waaaay back in the day, my oldest son was into Pokemon cards. He bought tons of them and only used a few for his "battle decks". We had leftovers galore! We discovered ebay as a way to sell off his extras, and buy other people's extras. This led to me opening an ebay store devoted to Pokemon cards in 2005. Eventually I got into selling other Pokemon related items, such as jewelry and figures. I searched and searched for Pokemon pins but there were no wholesale outlets for them. I got the bright idea to make my own, and bought a cheap(ish) pin making machine.
Eventually the pins were outselling the cards so I upgraded to a much nicer machine.
Finally we changed the focus of the store to pins only and changed the name of the shop accordingly. Since I was now into handmade products, I also opened a correlating ETSY shop. Things went well for quite a few years.
An unexpected pregnancy at an advanced age had me panicked and I closed both shops in 2010 to deal with things. After my second son got a little older and I felt like I had time on my hands again, I opened a new shop on ETSY. The pin business is going well again!
