We recently connected with Daniel Steigman and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, appreciate you joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I have lived my life in service of the world around me. I have found the greatest joy in meeting needs that others shy away from. My motivation has been to see those I could help grow and become the people they are able to become.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My wife and I decided we wanted to adopt a daughter. My wife couldn’t have children after age 21, and we felt a hole in our lives. We were poor. We couldn’t go to an orphanage. We found out about the Fost-adopt program in our area and signed up. Within a short time we had our first child to care for. My wife loved to sew and she started making child sized quilts to have the Social Service Agency give to children who were picked up, for various reasons, Over time, my wife needed a better sewing machine, then a quilting machine, then a place to put all the stuff and eventually a bigger quilting machine. I told her to support her habit, we would need to start a quilt shop so we could afford to continue. We rented 350 sq ft of space and that life began. Over time we moved 4 times to larger locations and then a workshop and a sales floor. The name we chose for our first shop was Foster Family Quilts. We were constantly asked if we were a foster care agency or our name was Foster and eventually, upon one of our moves, we changed the name of the store too.

Today, I own a small quilt shop in Camp Verde, AZ, called Stitches. Compared to my prior quilt shop and many other quilt shops in the world, it is insignificant. But we get people coming here, from many states around us and Mexico, for us to help them with their sewing machines. I like fixing things but I like not charging people too. Not the best business plan, I suppose. However, what I do is, when a person comes into my shop with their sewing machine, I will place it on a table out front, plug it in, talk to the owner and see what they think is wrong. The owners come in with the expectation that it is going to be very costly, take weeks to get back their machine, and somehow be taken advantage of. This is not untrue of many places but not here.

I often find that machine issues are extremely minor issues, usually something that the owner has forgotten, a thread wrapped up inside, a piece put in wrong-simple issues. I will fix the problem, test the machine in front of them, have them try the machine themselves and send it home with them, at no charge. I might take 5 minutes of my time and theirs and save them multiple trips, the cost of a repair, and give them instruction that will help them with their sewing from then on. I never let them pay me. If someone tosses money over the counter as they leave, that is on them, but most of the time the owner’s take the gift I have given in the way it has been intended.

Simply put, I would rather be good people than a good business man. However, because of the way I treat people, I am trusted when they have a real need, wish to purchase new equipment and have my behavior shared all over our local communities. Best advertising I can ever get and there is seldom a time when someone doesn’t come in that they don’t tell me that they were told about us from a friend and they wanted to see for themselves.

It has been going on 5 years since we opened this store. Just now, we are actually profitable, meaning in our case that everything is paid for, there is a little money in the bank and we have a fully stocked shop. However, we have not taken money out of the shop for ourselves. We didn’t need it and wanted to make the shop the best place it could be for our town and those in the Verde Valley. I am never bored and have a quality of life here that I only dreamed of in the past, a good return on my investment, I believe.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There was a time, 7 years ago, when I had had my quilt shop for many years. I had become tired, burned out a bit, and wanted to quit. I had a son who was interested in what we were doing and had come to work for me too. He was someone who had many dreams of what could be while I was a person very involved in making sure I could pay my bills, meet payroll and have a quiet life.

Because we had been open for as long as we had been, and offered our shop for free time sewing and fellowship, we had a few different groups of sewing ladies and gentlemen, that were regulars at our store. It came to a place where these kind folks started to feel like co=owners and the pressure they were putting on me was too much for me. It got to the point where I could no longer face them. I started having panic attacks at the fabric cutting table, uncontrollable shaking, an appearance of heart issues, etc. On December 31,2015 I setup an LLC, made that son the President, and walked away, all the way to the repair room, not to be involved in the decision making unless I was forced. When the shop was turned over, it was debt free, had 5 full-time employees and was growing daily.

With the introduction of new management and ideas, the shop took a turn. The biggest change was that my son brought in a completely new, and very expensive sewing machine line. This forced me to be involved in training out of state and taking on a whole new load but since I was in the repair room, it wasn’t too bad. However, I was also a very good salesman and once the new line had been integrated, I was suddenly called upon to make sales. The pressure I had made such and effort to get away from was returning with a vengeance.

18 months after the LLC was started I was handed the keys and a “sorry”. My son had tried his best but the store was now in $100,000 of debt and back in my hands. I wouldn’t have taken it back but my son had not setup new Vendor accounts and my name was all over the bills. I was not angry at my son. He had really tried hard but he was a dreamer and I was a bookkeeper. We looked at things very differently. He couldn’t maintain the payroll and the debts and that was that. I hired our accountant to come, deal with the vendors for me, get acceptable repayment plans, setup COD accounts with the sewing machine vendors for parts purchases so I could maintain customer machines, and then I moved forward with the store once again.

1 year later, I closed the shop, sold the inventory to an employee who wanted to start her own shop in a different location, had enough money left over to pay off the debt that was left, and walked away. My wife and I moved our personal equipment to a small store space downtown and just enjoyed being free and retired. However, people could see my embroidery machine through the window and started knocking on my door to do work for them…… I bet you can guess what happened next!

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

Our business started out as another office space, in another state, after we had retired. We moved here so one of our special needs children could attend a fabulous facility for the Developmentally Disabled. When we moved, we had a garage full of sewing and embroidery equipment. We needed a place to put it, so we found a fairly inexpensive office space to put it in. That space even had higher windows! However, my embroidery machine was in said higher window, and people saw it. I was thoroughly enjoying my time making art embroidery when people started knocking on the window wanting me to do embroidery for them. It was De Ja Vue all over again. I didn’t want to do it. I was having fun. Then Covid hit, although at that time we didn’t yet understand what we were facing.

One night, I had a dream. I was fixing sewing machines again. There was a lineup of people and machines and my skills were needed. I was so depressed! I had left all my tools behind when I sold my former inventory. I was never going to do this again! I told my sweet wife about the dream, and she said, “That sounds like a good idea.” I wanted to beat her! I never would but I didn’t want to go back into that again. I balked at her words but knowing how those kinds of dreams have worked in my life before, I agreed to put a note on the Camp Verde Facebook page that I had these skills and was interested in seeing if there was interest in me takin on repairs. I expected no response. They didn’t know me. I had no reputation to prove my abilities. However, I had 50 responses with 20 hours! I was so mad. I didn’t want to do it. I knew what it meant. The next Saturday I went out and bought a few thousand dollars worth of tools and was back in business.

I had so many old, sick, closeted sewing machines come my way, I could barely keep up. Once they got inside the building, they say my wife’s machine quilting, and the next thing we know she is back to work too! Served her right! Soon we hooked back up with the sewing machine company I liked best and then within months we needed to move to a new location, during the biggest trouble with Covid and start a new shop again. Just for a little validity here, a shop in a town 20 miles away, had lost their repair tech to cancer, and there was no local sewing machine repair in the area until I opened my big internet mouth. My dreams like that are usually right.

All of that is to say that in my little shop we offer:

Sewing machine sales
Sewing machine repair
Machine embroidery
Machine quilting
Fabric and notion sales
Scissor sharpening
We are the only store within miles that has any form of ribbon no less.
Sewing classes.

Contact Info:

• Website: www. stitchescv.com www.stitchescv.store
• Instagram: stitchescv
• Facebook: stitchescv