Jim Mickelson did not plan to start an embroidery company. In 1977 he was working administration for the Alaska Pipeline, flying between Washington and Anchorage every other week. On one of those flights he noticed something: every worker on the pipeline wore the same plain cap. No logos. No team identity. Just canvas and sweat.
He filled his empty luggage space with embroidered caps on the return trip. Three hundred caps. He sold them in three days. The next trip he took six hundred. Then twelve hundred. Within a year he was making more money selling hats than working for Atlantic Richfield. Northwest Embroidery was born in a rented space in downtown Tacoma with a single 11-head embroidery machine.
That was 1977. Today we operate as Northwest Custom Apparel from a two-building facility in Milton, Washington. Jim runs the company alongside his sons Erik and Scott. We have outfitted over 10,000 teams, produced more than 225,000 projects, and never outsourced a single piece of production. This is how we got here.
Jim Mickelson grew up in Tacoma, graduated from Stadium High School, and built a career in oil company administration. The Alaska Pipeline project paid well but required constant travel. On those flights Jim noticed a gap: pipeline workers wanted branded gear that showed which crew they belonged to. The market existed. The supply did not.
He bought his first batch of caps wholesale. He sewed patches onto them by hand in his garage on North Proctor Street. The patches were crude. The stitching was uneven. But the workers bought every cap he brought because no one else was selling them.
The demand forced a decision. Jim could keep sewing by hand and stay small. Or he could buy a machine and scale. He chose the machine. A single 11-head commercial embroidery machine arrived in Tacoma in late 1977. It cost more than his car. It produced caps at a rate his hands could never match. Northwest Embroidery had its first production asset.
The early 1980s brought two changes that defined the company’s direction. First, local businesses started asking for embroidered polos and work shirts, not just caps. Second, Jim invested in digitizing technology that converted artwork into stitch files readable by the machines.
In those days digitizing meant programming stitch coordinates by hand into paper rolls with punched holes. Each design required hours of manual work. The paper rolls filled shelves. A single logo file took up more physical space than a ream of printer paper. When computer-based digitizing arrived in the mid-1980s, Jim adopted it immediately. The paper rolls disappeared. The accuracy improved. Designs that took a full day to program now took two hours.
By 1985 the company had outgrown the rented Tacoma space. Jim purchased property at 2025 Freeman Road East in Milton, Washington. The location sits on the hilltop between Seattle and Tacoma, twenty minutes from downtown Tacoma and thirty-five minutes from downtown Seattle. The building had room for multiple machines, a showroom, and parking for client visits. It is still our headquarters today.
The 1990s brought Northwest Embroidery into licensed collegiate apparel. Washington State University, the University of Washington, and Gonzaga University needed official merchandise for their athletic programs. The licensing requirements were strict: exact Pantone colors, specific logo placements, and compliance with NCAA trademark rules.
We built relationships with the licensing departments at each school. We invested in color-matching systems that guaranteed consistency across thousands of pieces. We developed quality control processes that caught errors before they reached the stadium.
The highlight of this era came in 1997 when Washington State University played in the Rose Bowl. We produced the official Rose Bowl caps and apparel for the team and fan base. The order was massive. The deadline was immovable. We ran three shifts for ten days. Every piece met the licensing standard. Every piece shipped on time.
That order taught us something we still apply: large events do not move their dates. Your vendor either delivers or fails. We have built our scheduling and capacity planning around that principle ever since.
Erik Mickelson joined the company full-time in the late 1990s after graduating from Washington State University. Scott Mickelson followed shortly after. The second generation brought new capabilities: screen printing, direct-to-garment printing, and laser engraving. Each method required different equipment, different training, and different quality standards.
We did not outsource these additions. We bought the equipment, hired the operators, and built the expertise in-house. A screen printing press arrived in 2003. A DTG printer in 2008. A laser engraver in 2012. Each addition expanded what we could offer without diluting our quality control.
The 2000s also brought digital transformation. Our entire design library, which once filled shelves of paper rolls, now fits on a single memory chip. Orders that once required phone calls and faxed approvals now move through email and digital proofing. But the core process has not changed: a human reviews every file, a human operates every machine, and a human inspects every finished piece.
By 2015 the name “Northwest Embroidery” no longer described what we did. Embroidery remained our largest service, but screen printing, DTG, DTF, laser engraving, and promotional products had grown into significant revenue streams. Clients called us for “custom apparel,” not “embroidery.” The name needed to match the reality.
We rebranded to Northwest Custom Apparel in 2015. The change was not cosmetic. It reflected a strategic shift from a single-service decorator to a full-service custom apparel production house. The rebrand required new signage, new marketing materials, new website architecture, and new client education. We handled it internally, the same way we handle production.
The rebrand also clarified our position in the market. We are not a dropshipper. We are not a broker. We are a production facility that makes what we sell. That distinction matters to clients who need accountability, consistency, and the ability to visit the facility where their order is produced.
Our Milton facility now occupies two buildings on Freeman Road East. The main building houses embroidery, screen printing, and DTG production. The second building handles warehousing, order fulfillment, and laser engraving. We employ twenty-three people full-time. Our longest-tenured employee has been with us for twenty-five years.
Our equipment includes:
We have also maintained a branch office in China since the early 2000s. It handles large specialty orders and sourcing for clients who need production volumes beyond our in-house capacity. The China office reports to Milton. Quality standards are identical.
A production facility is only as good as the people who run it. We have been fortunate to retain skilled operators who treat quality as a personal standard.
Ruth Nhoung celebrated twenty-five years with us in 2024. She started as an embroidery operator and now trains new hires on machine setup and quality inspection. Her eye for thread tension and registration accuracy is unmatched. When a client needs a complex 3D puff embroidery on a structured cap, Ruth runs the sample.
Steve Deland handles artwork preparation and digitizing. He has been with the company since the paper-roll era. He can look at a low-resolution JPEG and tell you whether it will embroider cleanly before he opens the file in software. His digitizing decisions determine whether a logo looks professional or amateur on the finished garment.
Erik Mickelson manages operations, marketing, and client relationships. He founded the Apparel Graphic Academy to train designers and decorators on industry standards. He answers the phone when clients call. He inspects problem orders personally. He has never worked anywhere else.
In an era of automated chatbots and offshore call centers, we still answer the phone with a human voice. Every call rings through to our Milton office. If the line is busy, it rings again. We do not route clients through phone trees or make them leave messages that never get returned.
This is not nostalgia, but an operational discipline. Custom apparel orders involve too many variables for automation. A construction company needs ANSI-certified safety gear with specific reflective striping. A school needs spirit wear in Pantone-matched colors for a playoff game. A restaurant needs aprons that survive grease, heat, and daily washing. Each order requires conversation, clarification, and confirmation.
Our core values have not changed since 1977:
We are members of the Fife-Milton-Edgewood Chamber of Commerce. We sponsor local youth sports teams. We produce uniforms for Fife High School, Puyallup School District, and multiple youth baseball and soccer leagues. When Fife High made the football playoffs, we produced 400 spirit wear shirts in three days.
Our facility is open for visits by appointment. Clients from Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Kent, and Federal Way drive to Milton to see their designs in production. We show them the machines, explain the process, and let them hold the finished sample before approving the full order. No national vendor offers this. Their production is in a warehouse three states away. Ours is twenty minutes from Tacoma.
The custom apparel industry changes constantly. New decoration methods arrive. Fabric technology evolves. Client expectations shift toward faster turnaround and smaller minimums. We adapt to these changes by investing in equipment and training, not by outsourcing to cheaper vendors.
What does not change: our location in Milton, our family ownership, our in-house production, and our commitment to quality over volume. We have seen competitors come and go. The ones who survive are the ones who own their production, stand behind their work, and treat clients as relationships, not transactions.
We plan to be here in 2030, 2040, and beyond. The Mickelson family intends to operate this facility for another generation. If you need custom apparel in the Pacific Northwest, we will be here to produce it.
| Article | What You Will Learn |
|---|---|
| History of Northwest Custom Apparel Since 1977 | The full timeline from Alaska Pipeline caps to today's production facility |
| How the First Embroidery Machine Arrived in Washington | The story of Jim Mickelson's first commercial embroidery equipment |
| Our History With College Sports Licensing and Embroidery | Rose Bowl production, NCAA compliance, and university partnerships |
| Northwest Embroidery Rebranding to Northwest Custom Apparel | Why we changed our name and what it meant for our clients |
| The Oldest Embroidery Factory in the Northwest | How our facility has evolved over four decades |
| Celebrating Ruth Nhoung: 25 Years of Service | The career of our longest-tenured embroidery operator |
| It's the Employees, Stupid | Our philosophy on treating staff as our most important asset |
| Impersonal Internet vs. Happy Local Manufacturing | Why we choose local production over dropshipping |
| Inside Our Monday Meeting: How We Protect Every Embroidery Order | Our internal operations and communication systems |
| Stitches Through Time: The Evolution of Embroidery From 1828 to 2023 | The broader history of embroidery and our place in it |
| History of Embroidery | How embroidery techniques have evolved over centuries |
| History of Polo Shirts: Fabrics and Manufacturing | The garment history behind one of our most-decorated products |
| Brief History of Direct-to-Garment Printing | How DTG technology emerged and why we adopted it |
| Embroidery Prices in 1985 | What custom embroidery cost forty years ago and what changed |
| Trans-Alaska Pipeline Caps | The origin story: how Jim Mickelson's first caps launched a company |
We were founded in 1977 as Northwest Embroidery by Jim Mickelson. We rebranded to Northwest Custom Apparel in 2015 to reflect our expanded services. We have operated from our Milton, Washington facility for over forty years.
Yes. Jim Mickelson founded the company and still serves as CEO. His sons Erik and Scott manage operations and production. The company has remained family-owned and operated since 1977.
Yes. We welcome client visits at our Milton facility by appointment. You can observe the digitizing process, see the Tajima machines in production, inspect finished samples, and meet the team that will produce your order. Call 253-922-5793 to schedule.
Our production facility and showroom are at 2025 Freeman Road East, Milton, Washington 98354. We are located on the Milton/Edgewood hilltop, twenty minutes from Tacoma and thirty-five minutes from Seattle
No. Every piece of custom apparel is produced in-house at our Milton facility. We have not outsourced since 1977. We maintain a branch office in China for large specialty orders, but all standard production runs through Milton.
We employ twenty-three full-time team members at our Milton facility. Our longest-tenured employee has been with us for twenty-five years. The average tenure exceeds eight years.
Erik Mickelson is the Operations Manager at Northwest Custom Apparel in Milton, Washington, with 29 years of hands-on experience in embroidery digitizing, screen printing, and custom apparel production. He graduated from Washington State University in 1996 and founded the Apparel Graphic Academy. His father, Jim Mickelson, founded Northwest Custom Apparel in 1977.
Erik Mickelson is the Operations Manager at Northwest Custom Apparel in Milton, Washington, with 29 years of hands-on experience in embroidery digitizing, screen printing, and custom apparel production. He graduated from Washington State University in 1996 and founded the Apparel Graphic Academy. His father, Jim Mickelson, founded Northwest Custom Apparel in 1977.
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