Mickey and Carol Chandler

Our digitizers thought that you would like to know more about us and how the site got started, before getting into their profiles. We are Mickey and Carol Chandler, owners and developers of the mall.

In 2001, we were living in Austin, Texas, where Carol had a full time job as a programmer with child #1 in on site day care, and Mickey worked from home for a company in California investigating internet abuse. (That means that he tracked down spammers and got them kicked off their ISPs!) We were expecting baby #2 when the dotcom boom fell apart and Mickey got laid off. Ends were just not going to meet with two children in day care in Austin, so we decided to make a big change. Mickey had been preaching for a small church in Gatesville, which is about a 2 hour drive from Austin, on a temporary basis. That got changed to permanent, and we moved to Gatesville. We both grew up in small Texas towns, and it is so nice to be back in one again! Who needs big city conveniences - we can run errands at 5:00 and not worry about traffic! LOL. Mickey continues to preach, does internet related legal research, computer repair, and is running for Constable this year. We both do internet development from home now, in addition to running the mall. Carol does most of the customer service and site development, and Mickey keeps the server up and runs the forums, mailing list, and projects site. We do most of this from our home, all while taking care of the three children that we now have. I know that many of you can relate to working from home with little ones running around!

You might have noticed that we didn't mention anything about embroidery. That was no oversight - we can barely sew buttons back on, and don't own a machine, although we would love to try it. So how did a couple of computer geeks get involved in selling embroidery designs? We met AuntyM! We did some web development work for her on her sewing web site, and got to talking about things we could do on the web. We soon decided that with our technical skills and the embroidery knowledge of a team of digitizers, we could build a great site. We have consulted our digitizers every step of the way, and striven to build a site that works well for them as well as for our customers. Our mission is to attract and keep the best digitizers in the world, so that we can have the highest quality designs for you.

Our vision for the future of the mall includes having a few more digitizers - not too many - and expanding our offerings to include thread and other supplies, embroidery software, and more books and tutorials. We also plan to offer CD collections, and the option to receive your order on disk or Ultimate Box cards. We hope to become an embroiderers first stop when shopping!

Running the Mall has been a lot of fun! We have had long chats on the phone with some of you, and have enjoyed the chance to get to know you. Embroidery is a whole new world for us, and it is a fascinating one!