By
Jeff Warren, reporter Pickens County Progress
Newspaper.
Housed in a medium-sized,
metal commercial building beside a gravel road in the woods, Team Sales of North Georgia,
Inc. looks pretty laid back as businesses go. But this Pickens-based company with just
five full-time employees (including two salesmen) has its finished products going over the
ocean.
You can find shirts and
other fabric products, embroidered by Team Sales, in military hospitals at the other side
of the world. The company does work for the Wounded Warrior Project, a mission to American
service men and women, wounded in action.
"John Melia [founder of
the Wounded Warrior Project] was in Desert Storm, the first Gulf War, and he was injured
in the war," said Team Sales co-owner, John Wright. Wright runs Team Sales with his
wife, Carol.
“He [Melia] wound up in
a hospital in Germany with nothing but his skivvies,” Wright continued. War wounded,
medevacced from the battlefield, are quickly airlifted to hospitals out of the war zone,
Wright said, “so they wind up in a hospital hundreds or thousands of miles from their
gear with nothing.”
Recovered and out of the
military, Melia thought of packing some backpacks with items a similarly displaced wounded
soldier might need, and forwarding the packs to military hospitals overseas.
"He sent 100 himself,
and they were so well received they begged for more," Carol Wright said.
Melia began raising funds to
keep the effort going, and the Wounded Warrior Project was born. Originally, backpacks
were stuffed with underwear, t-shirts, sweatshirts, toiletries, socks, flip flops and
basic necessities. "And now they've progressed to the point where they send a CD
player and a free phone card," John Wright said.
Team Sales' work for Wounded
Warrior started with embroidered staff shirts. Now the company does the t-shirts included
in soldier backpacks and embroiders the Wounded Warrior logo on the backpacks too. Wounded
Warrior is Team Sales biggest customer.
John Wright described Team
Sales as a Christian-based business. "We try to operate the way Jesus would want us
to," John explained. "We don't beat people in the head with it. We like to look
at everything we do and feel comfortable that it's right. If you want something ugly on a
shirt, you'll have to go someplace else," he laughed.
At one point, Wounded
Warrior decided to switch to a supplier closer to its Roanoke, Virginia headquarters. But
it wasn't long before they returned to their Pickens-based provider.
"They said we had set
the standard, and no one else had been able to meet it," John Wright explained.
"When we send 'em a shirt, it's been steamed and folded and in a bag [individually
wrapped]. When Carol lets it go out of this shop, it's as good as anybody can make it.
"All Wounded Warrior
stuff, it's done from our heart. We do it as cheaply as possible for those guys. We told
'em we would do it for free for 'em if we could, but we could only do it once. Then we'd
be out of business," he laughed.
Recently Soldier Ride, a
partner with the Wounded Warrior Project, called on Team Sales for some last minute rider
shirts when another provider failed to deliver. Wright described Soldier Ride as a
non-profit fundraiser to gather resources and raise public awareness for disabled service
members. The ride is a bike trek across the United States. Riders are amputees and others
who have recovered from war wounds.
"War today has changed
from the old days when the vast majority of people wounded in war died," Wright said.
Because of improved treatment, a lot of the wounded come back from the battlefield alive
but handicapped. Wright said Soldier Ride and Wounded Warrior funds rehab for amputees,
provides new high-tech prosthetics and informs disabled veterans about services available
to them through the Veterans Administration.
When Soldier Ride needed
t-shirts in a hurry, the Wrights accepted the challenge. These shirts came together from
raw cloth. The Wrights first located a fabric supplier and then a sewing plant in Sparta,
Georgia to cut and stitch.
For rider shirts, logos go
on as heat-activated transfers. It took a Michigan company three weeks to work up transfer
logos. Finished shirts from Sparta shipped straight to Michigan where logos were applied.
But Soldier Riders were already on the road by that time.
To have shirts on riders at
the start of the ride, the Wrights diverted 36 un-marked t-shirts from Sparta and
embroidered logos on to the shirts at their Pickens County shop. Shirts received the
Soldier Ride logo and logos of ride sponsors: Cracker Barrel, U-Haul, the Wounded Warrior
Project and AIG Insurance. Each shirt required 44,000 embroidered stitches.
"That's a lot. That's a
whole lot," John Wright said.
"We worked two
sixteen-hour days to get them done," Carol Wright said. They run the embroidery plant
with just themselves and one other machine operator, Hortencia Gomez.
"Embroidery
scratches," Carol Wright said, "so I put a backing on each of them [each
embroidered logo], so it wouldn't scratch them. That's what I do for my grandchildren.
This is a business, but it's also an act of love."
"We did 36 of those
[shirts] so the riders would have something," John Wright said. "They were
planning to just wear [standard] t-shirts. This is a wicking fabric that wicks the
moisture away from their bodies. It's a lot more comfortable for the riders."
The Wrights met some of the
Soldier Riders when they passed through Acworth on their way across the country. The ride
concludes the end of July in San Diego, California.
“We're really thinking
about going out there,” John Wright said. “We're thinking seriously about it.
The end of the ride is about the time school starts up. It's a bad time for us to close,
but we're thinking about going out anyway.
“It's a great bunch of
guys. We're talking about lion hearts, guys who have been wounded for our sake and
absolute achievers. To be around them is to be inspired.”
To think that when Soldier
Riders cross the finish line in California, the shirts on their backs will have come from
here—that’s pretty inspiring too.
For more information about
Soldier Ride and the Wounded Warrior Project, check out their websites.
Soldier Ride
www.soldierride.com
Wounded
Warrior Project
www.woundedwarriorproject.org |
