Blog

After 80 years of gracing us with his presence, last week my dad moved on to a better place. Vern Swanson spent 40 years of his career selling Oscar Mayer products. This included selling and eating lots of hot dogs! As a kid I had the privilege of watching him service customers and seeing him work. He showed me what it takes to be successful. Prior to retiring in 1983, he received a national sales award for selling millions of pounds of low fat turkey products. This included a trip to the Super Bowl in 1983, where he had his photo taken with the famous Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Who would have thought that someday his daughter would be adding 'glam' to uniforms NFL Cheerleaders?

This year we will be releasing our 2011-2012 Dance Catalog earlier than ever. Yesterday we had a great photo shoot at Steve Lucus Photography. As you can see, Kiaya and Kristen are having fun entertaining us!

The 2011 Midwestern & Pacific Coast Sectional Championships are in Rochester, MN this year and that means only an hour and half drive from our office in Eden Prairie. The Phoenix Synchronized Skaters and their coaches, Jeannine Weinschrod and Helene Wolf, along with many parents drove in 2 large coach buses to pay us a visit before they took the ice this morning. We gave them a tour of the building and talked them through the process on how we made their skating dresses from start to finish- they were impressed! The little skaters were also very enamoured with Oscar and Jessie and almost took them away on the bus back to Rochester :)

Jessie and Oscar are still struggling to find a job they can do in production.

Well, things have not worked out with Jessie in Embrodiery and Oscar in Cutting. So, this week they transfered to new postions. Humm...seems like they are stuggling to find a job suited for them.

Today Karen and I visited RR Donnelley to check the progress and color quality of the 2010-2011 dance collection catalog. We met some the staff working on our project and had a tour of the operation. It is amazing to see the actual production process. Thank you for everyone at RR Donnelley for showing us around. We appreciate your commitment to quality and customer satsifaction. The catalog will be mailed next week!

Today we had a photo shoot at Steve Lucas' Photography Studio. It was a thrill taking pictures of the St. Thomas Dance Team. Alysia Ulfers and her team showed off their winning trophy as UDA Collegiate Champions. Thank you Alysia for letting us be a part of your accomplishment, we feel so privileged to have made your outfits!