My parents built a business around thier marriage.
My mother was a surgical nurse during WWII. She worked at what the Americans called a MASH unit. She learned to drive a four wheel drive before I was conceived. My father was a Sargent in England training soldiers for the D Day invasion.
After the war they came back to Canada and met. They got married. While my mother was working as a surgery nurse at the University of Edmonton hospital, and my father doing sales they suddenly changed gears.
Mother complained about her nursing uniforms wearing out too fast.
That's when thier 'Ureka' moment happened. They decided to build a better mouse trap. 'Let's make a better uniform'. So they rented a small room to place a fabric cutting table and one industrial sewing machine modified from two stitches to four.
Well my mom turned on her fellow nurses at the hospital.
The uniforms were at hit. They couldn't make them fast enough so they made a second machine and hired a seamstress.
Well once they tried out new fabrics and using pastel colors and more flattering cuts for all sizes of the female figure...it took off like wildfire.
2 machines turn to 6. Then 8 etc...etc.
Time to expand so they opened up a downtown retail store. 'Doris Uniforms' (named after my mother)
20 years later they had 60 machines selling uniforms to nurses, doctors, pharmacists, police departments, hotels etc etc over 4 provinces and doing fashion shows.
All because two people survived the war and fell in love.

Comments
Post a Comment