ST. BENEDICT, Sask. – Willie Muller likes to tell the one about the Vancouver executive and the village of St. Benedict.
The way he tells it, Muller and his wife Holly, who run a business that places words and pictures onto clothing and other fabrics, had just agreed to act as the Saskatchewan agent for Rubenstein, a major sewing equipment distributor from which the Mullers had bought their embroidery machines.
“My boss in Vancouver said, ‘so, how many people are in your town,’ and I said, ‘about a hundred.’ He said, ‘100,000? That’s not a bad-sized city,’ and I said, ‘no, a hundred people,’ and he said, ‘my God, that many people live on my block.’ “
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It’s a funny story, but for Muller, there’s a serious message.
“He couldn’t believe that we would invest that kind of machinery into a town of 100. But again, that’s big city thinking compared to rural Saskatchewan.”
Muller tells that story to highlight the challenges he and his wife faced when they decided to stay in St. Benedict, even after their textile advertising business grew into two thriving companies.
“Lots of people don’t believe it that it’s done here,” he said. “The first question is, ‘where do you get your business from?’ “
Muller started running into that question in the late 1970s after he and Holly were married. They had built a house in St. Benedict and he was farming with his brother just outside town. To earn extra money, he began working for a Saskatoon advertising agency that was shipping hats out of the province to get logos attached. He wanted to do the logos in St. Benedict.
“They didn’t think much of it because they didn’t think we’d have walk-in business,” Muller said.
The agency was right. There was no walk-in business on St. Benedict’s Centre Street and still isn’t, but within months Muller had started doing it anyway and turned conventional wisdom on its ear by proving that walk-in business didn’t matter.
Today, using methods such as embroidery and screen printing, the Mullers put logos on shirts, jackets, hats and even backpacks for schools, companies and sports teams. They are also making vinyl signs for the sides of semitrailers and are getting into digital printing for making billboards. Customers from Saskatchewan and Alberta place orders by phone and e-mail rather than walking through the shop door.
The business started in the Mullers’ home, using the old method of taking pictures of the designs and turning them into images suitable for printing onto fabric.
The exposing table was in the furnace room and other equipment was scattered throughout the house.
“Needless to say, my bathtub got eroded by the cleanser from taking the stuff out of the screens,” Holly said.
By 1981, the couple had decided to get serious about the business and Holly quit her job as a hair dresser in nearby Cudworth.
The operation moved out of the house and into the garage and eventually into a shop built next to the house. They called their business C.A.P.S., or Custom Advertising Products St. Benedict, and it has exceeded expectations.
They originally hoped to make enough money to go on a vacation every year. They now make more than enough to do that, but are so busy it’s a struggle to find the time.
They’ve also passed another milestone, Holly added.
“Willie said, when he was starting this, if he spent $1,500 he would have everything he needed. We have way, way surpassed that $1,500.”
Willie estimates they have $200,000 worth of equipment and computer programs, including a one-head and a four-head embroidery machine, a four-colour and a six-colour screen printer, a fabric cutter, a vinyl cutter and five computers to run the automated equipment.
An artist and a computer designer, who both live in Lloydminster, do much of the artistic work.
Muller has been hired as Rubenstein’s sales and service agent in Saskatchewan. The job takes him away from home three or four days a week, selling embroidery machines, training owners and servicing equipment. He also provides a computer design service to customers who don’t want to buy the expensive programs needed to do that work.
He is also exceeding his goal for the new company, which is to get 12 people into the embroidery business every year. Most of his customers are farmers, who set up businesses similar to C.A.P.S., which Holly now runs while Willie is on the road.
A casualty of the expansion has been farming. While Willie and his brother had seeded 1,200 acres a year, three years ago he decided it was too much. He left the partnership and now farms 450 acres, which is less stressful.
“Farming is fun now,” he said.
Added Holly: “The role’s reversed. Before, this was the hobby and farming was the mainstay and now this is the main and farming has become the hobby.”
Willie squeezes farming in around his embroidery schedule, getting onto the field when he’s home.
“Besides, with cell phones, he can run his business out of his tractor,” his wife said.
The Mullers said Rubenstein would like them to move their business to Saskatoon, largely because of the higher profile it would give its Saskatchewan presence.
“On the sign when we go to the show, it’s Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Saskatchewan, because if they put St. Benedict on the sign, who’s going to know where St. Benedict is?” Holly said.
But, added Willie, leaving St. Benedict is out of the question.
“Because I still farm. And farming is a good life. It’s just that you can’t make any money at it.”
The Mullers think their success contradicts rural Saskatchewan’s reputation for being an economic backwater and proves entrepreneurs shouldn’t shy away from small towns, no matter what the business.
“It can be all done here,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter where you are.”
