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Vermilion Design Company buys Tower embroidery business

Cade Gornick starting a new career after 20 years in the Army National Guard

Jodi Summit
Posted 9/8/22

TOWER- Sherri Anderson’s Northern Pine Embroidery has been embroidering and printing t-shirts, clothing, caps and more for area businesses for 20 years. Originally located at her home in …

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Vermilion Design Company buys Tower embroidery business

Cade Gornick starting a new career after 20 years in the Army National Guard

Posted

TOWER- Sherri Anderson’s Northern Pine Embroidery has been embroidering and printing t-shirts, clothing, caps and more for area businesses for 20 years. Originally located at her home in Soudan, she moved onto Tower’s Main Street in the Timberjay building over seven years ago. The business has steadily grown, along with her reputation of treating both small and large business owners with professional, quality service.
“I really like to work with small businesses,” she said, noting they often do not get personalized service going through larger on-line embroidery or t-shirt design outfits.
“You often can’t really see what you will be getting,” she said, “and they require a high number of pieces per order.”
Anderson has always been flexible with her clients. While she does work for many larger businesses and resorts who may be ordering hundreds of the same item, she also is happy to work with family-run businesses that are just interested in a few, all in different sizes.
The business, she said, was perfect when her two boys were in school. She loved being home when they got dropped off at the end of their driveway and could watch them walking to the house.
But Anderson was ready to retire and spend more time travelling. And she found someone who may be the perfect person to grow the business for the future.
“Everyone used to call me Tower’s embroidery lady,” she said, “now there is an embroidery man.”
Cade Gornick was also retiring, after 20 years in the Army National Guard where he served as a Sergeant First Class, but certainly wasn’t ready to leave the workforce.
The Tower-Soudan High School Class of 2000 graduate studied both firefighting and culinary arts during two stints in college. He married his wife Andrea in 2017, and since then they have added two young children to their family and moved to Tower, after living in the Rochester area.
Gornick was looking for a new business opportunity that would give him the flexibility to help care for his children during the day when Andrea was working because their children’s day care center is not able to take them every day.
“I used to have all these ideas to design on t-shirts when I was a kid,” he said. “I’ve always had an interest in designing.”
Gornick’s first design is the logo for his new business, Vermilion Design Company, and he was patiently learning the steps to turn his design into a multi-colored embroidered logo on t-shirts and caps.
“There is a lot to learn,” Gornick said.
But luckily Anderson is willing and able to work with him as he masters each part of the production side of the business. She estimates it will take at least three months to master all the skills needed.
While he mostly has the small business side of things set up and is working on getting accounts with all the suppliers he will be working with, learning to run the different kinds of machines will take a while.
And then there are all the ideas. The equipment in the shop is capable of printing on mugs, doing laser engraving, and wood burned designs, too.
The shop offers more than just custom-produced t-shirts, sweatshirts, and caps. There is car and window lettering, magnetic signs for vehicles, heat-press screen printing, and snowmobile and boat lettering. Many of the lettering jobs can be done very quickly, they said, though embroidery and screen-printing jobs take longer, often about two weeks.
Anderson’s shop used to have a nice selection of Vermilion-themed clothing for sale. That inventory is now available at Pike River Products, down the street.
The business is located at 414 Main St. in Tower, in the Timberjay building. The shop has its own separate entrance.
“Often people walk into the shop thinking it’s the Timberjay,” said Anderson. The building has two front doors facing Main Street. The door on the right is for the embroidery business, though both businesses are connected on the inside.
You can find Vermilion Design Company on Facebook, or by calling 218-750-7176.