While She Naps With Abby Glassenberg

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we’re talking about building an innovative company in the sewing industry with my guest, Fred Drexler. Fred, along with his wife, Joyce, founded Sulky of America, a premier thread and stabilizer company. Fred began his career in the sewing industry in 1965 at age 23 as a salesman for the Singer Company in Akron Ohio. In 1969, he opened his own Singer dealership in Punta Gorda, Florida and met Joyce in 1974. She founded Speed Stitch, the company that popularized free motion embroidery using a domestic sewing machine. In 1987 Speed Stitch partnered with a German thread manufacturer to form Sulky of America. We trace the history of the company from Fred’s early days selling Singer sewing machines, a job he took on a whim, to building one of the most significant companies in the home sewing and quilting industries today. Hear how Joyce stumbled upon water soluble stabilizer at a time when it was non-existent on the American market and how she and Fred went