Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jud Patterson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jud, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business

Gosh..I could write a book on the Crazy things that have happened to me in my endeavors since I left ‘Corporate America’. One of the most recent was what I’ll call a ‘Happy Accident’. Maybe not the Wildest things but fresh on my mind so I’ll go with it for now. One of the aspects of our business is to design locally themed T-shirts. We are in NC. One of our designs is a shirt with various Town and City names places horizontally and vertically so that the overall design is roughly the shape of North Carolina. Originally, the colors of the towns and cities was a mix of white and red and this was printed on a dark heather gray shirt. But, we had one customer who decided they want the design with ALL of the Towns and Cities printed in WHITE except for THEIR town, which was in Red. Well..this went over quite well and they have re-ordered several times. Recently, I didn’t have the Xtra Small shirts in their order so i sent them their order and told them I’d send the Extra Smalls later in the week. I got the Xtra Smalls in and printed them and when I sent then, I accidentally sent them to one of our other customers near them. They called me up and said, “We LOVE the sample shirts you sent!” I asked them which shirts she meant because I had not sent them any shirts that I knew of. She said, “The ones with Canton in Red and all the other towns in White. I told her I was soooo sorry but that those were supposed to have been sent to a store in Canton, NC (she was in Morganton, NC) So, I asked her to please mail them to the shop in Canton and I would pay for the shipping. BUT, she ended up placing an order for the same design but with MORGANTON in red and everything else in White. So..my ‘error’ turned into a positive. I have since done a few speculative shirts with the same idea but with some of the other major cities in NC in Red and will market them to shops on those towns/cities. This could be something that translates not only to places in NC, but to places all over the country.

Jud, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

This all started with an invention I made call The BeerHopper. The BeerHopper is a ‘Hop’ Shaped beer glass for which I obtained a design patent. I designed the glass to have an area on the front that was smooth so that I could personalize them somehow. I had a mould made and the glasses produced by a ‘hand glass’ shop in Cambridge, OH. I learned how to sandblast etch glass and started selling these to beer enthusiasts such as home brewers and craft beer lovers. I ended up doing about 150 of them for an IBM event which really helped kick off the idea. From there, the etching business grew to include mugs and awards (crystal awards that companies give out to emplyees yearly. I landed a contract with a local City Government and for the last 22 years have been doing their annual Years of Service Awards. I started working with one of the most famous Album Cover Artists in Rock Music History (Roger Dean, YES and Asia covers are his most famous pieces) and have done several items for him over the last 24 years and have attended ComicCon twice with him and several cruises featuring YES and several other progressive Rock Bands. Being able to quickly turnaround a design onto a piece ceramic or glass or onto coasters and a myriad of other items has allowed this to grow.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Well..I think you’ll get a LOT of Covid related replies here but here is another. One of the things we do in our business is printing using Dye Sublimation. When Covid hit, one of my suppliers had face masks that we easily printed using dye sublimation. So, we started printing custom face masks before many others were able to and got some very large orders right off the bat doing that. That’s one example. Another is actually starting the business in the first place. I was laid off from a very lucrative position in the softward industry not long after 9/11. I had just gone through a separation and had custody of my two sons. I had dabbled in the etching already so I just decided to go full bore into business for myself and run it from my home while I could stay home so to speak and continue to raise my sons.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I was selling uniquely made T-shirts at a local Flea Market in Raleigh, NC. These shirts were made using stencils and a special bleaching solution..so, the shirts actually had NO INK on them. One day, I had a long sleeve blank purple shirt just lying around and I decided to take the larger letters R A I N and put them on the shirt and then spray it with the solution. The result was that all of the material around the letters turned a sort of light purple/pink. After I took up the letter, the word RAIN in the original deep purple shirt color remained. I like ‘puns’ and I considered this a sort of ‘pun’ shirt for Purple Rain. The NEXT DAY, a lady came by my stall in the flea market and saw that shirt and said, “If it fits me, I’m going to buy it.” She went to try it on and came back wearing it. About 3 weeks later, she stopped by again and said, “I want a similar shirt but with the word HAZE” (Purple Haze – ala Jimi Hendrix) I made it for her and we decided to meet for lunch for me to give it to her in exchange for her buying me lunch. The rest is history..We have been together as partners ever since. We ended up buying a business that was located in the same warehouse that I was working out of and we eventually opened a retail shop in the town where we live.

Contact Info:

• Website: judsdesigns.com
• Instagram: Oak City Collection
• Facebook: facebook.com/beerhopper
• Twitter: beerhopper
• Other: [email protected]