Mandy, our new administrative assistant, asked my history today.  She wanted to know a little about the start of Taylor Studios.  This year we will be celebrating our 20th year in business.  Geez, I’m not that old am I?  I’ll share some of our boot strapping, humble start up stories this year.

My Sophomore year in college at SIU, I lived across the street from Joe Taylor.  It was a fun year.  My three roommates and his three roommates were inseparable.  Joe and I hit it off grand as we later married.  That year Joe was working for Gary Brees a taxidermist in Murphysboro, IL.  Gary won a job to fabricate trees for a nature center.  Neither of them really had a clue how to do this, yet they figured it out and learned about our industry.  It was like a light bulb going off.  Wow! People actually build museum exhibits as a business.  How cool is that?

Both Joe and I were entrepreneurial and knew even as young pups that we wanted to own a business.  Business school didn’t offer entrepreneurial classes at that time.  I started taking SBA classes at night to learn how to do it.  I became very connected with the SBA over the next four years of business school.  That year I also told Joe that some day we would make the Inc. 500.

That next summer I got two jobs, one at a horse stable and the other at the SIU Purchasing Department.  The owner of the horse stable, Wayne Qualls, was an entrepreneur.  He encouraged entrepreneurship.  We almost worked a deal with him to build a retail business serving outdoor recreation in the area.  It was one of the many business ideas in the early years.  It was nice to have Wayne, a successful small business owner, as a role model.

In 1990, Joe got a job at Chase Studio in Cedar Creek, MO.  Chase Studio designs and fabricates museum exhibits.  We moved to MO and I finished my MBA at MO State University.

Joe and I had many hobbies and we both loved the outdoors.  One outdoor hobby was hunting for artifacts.  We eventually turned this hobby into a line of artifact and fossil reproductions.  I also started a business called IMPACT, while still in graduate school, where I wrote interactive computer programs for museums.  This was the very start of Taylor Studios.  Eventually, Joe left Chase Studio and we joined forces creating Taylor Studios, offering computer programs, reproductions and exhibit fabrication.

At first, in order to make ends meet, I had to get a real job.  That six month real job as Director of Marketing for the Spaghetti Shoppe brought us to the Champaign, IL area. At the same time, the artifact and reproduction business continued to grow.  We sold the reproductions all over the world.  We still have some of our molds from that discontinued line of business.  It was great fun turning what we loved into a living.

Joe and I were great business partners, but not so good at marriage. We divorced in 1996. We continued to run the business together for years. I gradually bought him out and now am the sole owner of Taylor Studios.