I started Northwest Embroidery in 1977. I am Jim Mickelson, and this is the story of how a shop I started with one machine ended up producing for two Rose Bowl teams. That was before the University of Washington won a national championship. Before Ryan Leaf threw a football for Washington State. Before anyone talked about NIL or licensing holograms. I was selling embroidered caps to pipeline workers in Alaska and figuring out how to run a computerized embroidery machine. I did not know that within fifteen years, I would be producing the patches and jackets for two Rose Bowl teams in the same decade.
This is the story of how that happened. It is not a marketing pitch. It is what actually occurred between 1991 and 1998, and what it taught us about licensing, production pressure, and the difference between a good order and a disaster.
The 1991-1993 UW Huskies: Three Roses, Three Bowls
In 1991, the University of Washington football team won the national championship. They beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Don James was the head coach. Billy Joe Hobert was the quarterback. Napoleon Coffman ran the ball. I watched that game on television like everyone else in Seattle. What most people did not know was that the coaching staff and support personnel were wearing hats and jackets with patches we had embroidered in our shop in Tacoma.
We did not have an official licensing agreement with the university. In those days, licensing was loose. If you knew someone in the athletic department and you produced quality work, you got the order. I knew people. I had been in the business fourteen years by then. The university needed patches for the bowl game. They needed them fast. We delivered.
The design was simple. A rose. The year. The bowl name. We produced them on our single-head and early multi-head machines. The coaching staff got complimentary caps. The support staff got jackets. Nobody asked for a hologram or a royalty statement. That was not how college licensing worked in 1991.
The Huskies went back to the Rose Bowl in 1992 and 1993. Each time, the athletic department called us. Each time, we produced the patches. The 1992 design was slightly different. The 1993 design added a third rose to commemorate the three consecutive appearances. I still have a sample of that three-rose patch in a drawer at the shop. It is faded now. The thread colors have dulled. But the stitching is still tight.
Coach Don James retired in 1993. I met him twice. Once at a booster event in Bellevue. Once when he came by the shop to pick up a personal order. He was a large man. He shook my hand with a grip that hurt. He said thank you for the work. That was the last time I saw him.
The 1998 WSU Cougars: 250 Jackets in Five Days
In 1998, Washington State went to the Rose Bowl for the first time in sixty-seven years. Mike Price was the coach. Ryan Leaf was the quarterback. The entire state of Washington was excited. Half of my family graduated from Washington State. My wife Leeanna and I had season tickets. I was named WSU Cougar Dad of the Year in 1996. This was personal.
Linda Finch ran the Seattle Traveling Cougars. She was a raving fan. She organized travel packages, alumni events, and merchandise for every bowl game. In December of 1997, she called me. The Cougars had just secured the Rose Bowl bid. She needed 250 embroidered jackets for donors, alumni, and staff. She needed them by Christmas. The game was January 1st. This was December 20th.
I told her we could do it. I was not sure we could do it. We had four multi-head machines at that point. A 250-jacket order in five days meant running twenty-four hours a day with shifts. I called SanMar, our supplier in Seattle. They had the blank jackets in stock. They were fifteen minutes from our shop. I sent a truck.
We started production at 6:00 AM on December 21st. My sons Erik and Scott were both working in the shop by then. Erik ran the night shift. I ran the day shift. We slept on cots in the break room. The design was the WSU cougar head logo in crimson and gray. Each jacket took four minutes to stitch. Four heads running simultaneously. Sixteen jackets per cycle. We finished at 11:00 PM on December 25th. Christmas Day.
Linda picked them up on December 26th. She cried. I did not. But I thought about it.
The Cougars lost to Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Ryan Leaf threw four interceptions. I watched the game at home with Leeanna. She was disappointed. I was tired. The jackets looked good on television though. I saw three of them in the crowd shots.
What We Learned About Licensing
The college licensing industry changed between 1991 and 1998. In 1991, you could produce university merchandise with a handshake and a purchase order. By 1998, the Collegiate Licensing Company had consolidated most major programs. They required hologram tags, royalty payments, and approved vendor status. The loose system we had operated in was gone.
Michael Regan ran licensing for the University of Washington in the early nineties. He was a reasonable man. He understood that small shops like ours could produce quality work quickly. Sue Ann Chen took over later. She was stricter. She enforced the hologram rule. She required quarterly royalty reports. She was doing her job. I do not blame her. But the paperwork was more than we could handle while running production.
We stopped producing unlicensed university merchandise in the late nineties. Not because we wanted to. Because the federal government started treating counterfeit college merchandise as a serious crime. They seized equipment. They shut down shops. I knew two embroidery owners in Oregon who lost everything because they produced unauthorized Oregon Ducks caps. I was not going to be the third.
Today we focus on custom embroidery services for Washington State businesses, such as construction companies, schools, and corporate uniform programs, the same way we focused on college licensing for two decades.
We still produced for licensed vendors. Nordstrom’s carried our UW-branded merchandise for twenty years. Grocery stores and bookstores sold our hats and jackets. But we were the producer, not the licensor. The royalty went to the university. The margin went to the retailer. We got the production fee. That was the deal.
From Rose Bowl Patches to Retail Distribution
Between 1991 and 2011, we produced university-branded merchandise for twenty years. The peak was the mid-nineties. Every bowl game meant a rush order. Every winning season meant reorders. We produced for Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, and occasionally Boise State when they had a good year.
Nordstrom’s was our largest retail customer. They ordered seasonal collections. Fall meant football merchandise. Winter meant basketball. Spring meant graduation items. We produced samples in March. They approved in April. We ran production in May and June. The cycle repeated every year.
Grocery stores were different. They wanted low price and high volume. We produced basic caps and t-shirts with university logos. The margins were thin. The orders were large. We ran them on our fastest machines and shipped them by the pallet. This was not creative work. It was production work. We were good at it.
The licensing consolidation of the 2000s killed the small shop model. The Collegiate Licensing Company and Learfield IMG College controlled everything. They wanted large minimums. They wanted national distribution. They wanted vendors who could produce in China and ship to forty states. We could not compete with that. We were a family shop in Tacoma, then Milton. We had fifteen employees. We were not Nike.
We stopped producing for the retail university market around 2011. The last order was a small run of Washington State alumni jackets for a private event. Linda Finch had passed away by then. The Seattle Traveling Cougars had disbanded. I embroidered the last jacket myself. I put it in a box and gave it to Leeanna.
The NIL Era: Why We Stepped Back
Name, Image, and Likeness changed college licensing completely. Starting in 2021, college athletes could earn money from their own brand. Quarterbacks signed deals with car dealerships. Linemen promoted protein powder. Everyone had an agent. Everyone wanted a percentage.
If NIL had existed in 1991, our business model would have collapsed immediately. We produced hats with the UW logo. We did not produce hats with Billy Joe Hobert’s face. But under NIL rules, the player owns their likeness. The university owns the logo. A hat with both requires two royalty streams. Two contracts. Two sets of lawyers.
I am seventy-nine years old. I have been in this business 48 years. I do not have the energy to negotiate individual player contracts for every jacket we produce. Neither does Erik. Neither does Scott. We stepped back from college licensing because the system became too complex for a shop our size.
I am happy to be out of it. The paperwork was never the part I enjoyed. The part I enjoyed was watching a design go from a computer screen to a finished garment. That still happens every day at our shop. It just happens for construction companies, schools, and local businesses now. Not for bowl games.
What This History Means for Your Order
We produced patches for a national championship team. We produced 250 jackets in five days for a bowl game that half the state was watching. We navigated licensing changes that shut down competitors. We adapted when the industry consolidated. We are still here.
That is not a slogan. It is a fact. We have been in business since 1977. We have survived because we do good work, we meet deadlines, and we tell the truth about what we can and cannot do.
If you need custom embroidery for your business, your school, or your organization, we can help. We have ten Tajima TMAR-KC 8-head embroidery machines with 15 needles per head at 1,100 RPM. They are the same industrial systems we used to scale from the 1991 Rose Bowl patches to the 250-jacket WSU order in 1998. We have digitizing software that can reproduce your logo accurately. We have thread colors that match your brand standards. We have done this for forty-eight years.
We also run screen printing and DTG production under the same roof, so we match the decoration method to your fabric and deadline instead of forcing every order into embroidery.
We are neither the cheapest option, nor the fastest option for every order. But we are the option that will still be here when you need to reorder. That is what f48 years means.
Get a custom embroidery quote or call us at 253-922-5793. We will review your artwork, explain the production process, and give you a clear timeline. No bowl game required.
FAQ
We produced embroidered patches and jackets for the University of Washington coaching staff and support personnel during the 1991, 1992, and 1993 Rose Bowl appearances. We also produced 250 jackets for Washington State University alumni and donors for the 1998 Rose Bowl. We did not hold official NCAA licensing agreements. We produced as a contracted vendor for the universities directly.
College licensing was informal in the early 1990s. Vendors worked directly with athletic departments through personal relationships. By the late 1990s, the Collegiate Licensing Company consolidated most programs and required hologram tags, royalty payments, and approved vendor status. We adapted to the formal system until the consolidation of the 2000s made small shop participation impractical.
Three reasons. First, licensing consolidation favored large vendors with national distribution. Second, the paperwork and royalty reporting became too complex for a fifteen-employee shop. Third, the NIL era introduced individual player contracts that multiplied the legal complexity beyond our capacity.
In 1991, we used single-head and early multi-head embroidery machines. By 1998, we had four multi-head machines running simultaneously. Today we operate ten Tajima TMAR-KC 8-head machines with 15 needles per head at 1,100 RPM.
Yes. Our same-day and rush production system handles deadline-driven orders for local businesses, schools, and organizations. Our same-day and rush production system operates on an “In by 10, Out by 5” schedule for qualifying orders, with same-day pickup available at our Milton facility. The 250-jacket Christmas week order in 1998 was an extreme case. Normal rush turnaround is 2-3 business days for small orders and 5-7 days for large uniform programs.
Jim Mickelson is the Founder and CEO of Northwest Custom Apparel in Milton, Washington. He founded Northwest Embroidery in 1977 and was named Embroiderer of the Year in 1985, 1986, and 1987. He produced embroidery for the University of Washington’s 1991 national championship Rose Bowl team and the 1998 Washington State Rose Bowl team.
About the Author
Jim Mickelson is the Founder and CEO of Northwest Custom Apparel in Milton, Washington. A Navy veteran and Cal State Los Angeles graduate, he founded Northwest Embroidery in 1977. He was named Embroiderer of the Year three consecutive years (1985, 1986, and 1987), embroidered the original Nike swoosh for Blue Ribbon Sportswear, and produced patches for the University of Washington’s 1991 Rose Bowl team. He is the father of Erik Mickelson, Operations Manager at Northwest Custom Apparel.
