Embroider Buddy was created by Donna Kotzer Jacobs and is the result of more than three years' development work. "For the last four years I have been exhibiting at the Imprint Sportswear Show in the US. I had developed a nice line of bearwear and bears that imprinters could purchase," Donna explains. "However, I noticed that the embroiderers wanted a bigger imprint area, so I started to research a bear that one could embroider directly on the skin. The embroiderers needed a bear like EB, and it took someone in the toy business to create him. I look at Embroider Buddy as a child created out of the union of the toy and embroidery business." "I spent three years working and re-working countless prototypes to perfect the design. At first I was going to have a removable paw. One would take off the paw and embroider it and then put it back on - mabe with heavy duty Velcro? However, someone questioned whether the design would be childproof; could a chld pull off the paw easily? That was to Velcro the back of the Buddy. Then I thought: why didn't I use an opening at the bottom of the bear so that you could embroider the back as well? I was not happy with the Velcro so I tried an invisible zipper. "The inside was also an issue. Speaking to embroiderers I sensed they were not too keen on having to stuff the bear with handfuls of loose stuffing. Also, if a child opened the bear up there would be a 'stuffing mess'. I decided to create a 'pillow pouch' in the shape of the bear's belly that can be removed and inserted easily." The finished design is incredibly simple to use: all the embroiderer has to do is unzip the invisible zipper in the EB's backside, remove the pillow pouch and slip the body over the machine's plate to begin the embroidery process; once the embroidery is completed, pop the pillow pouch back insde, zip up your EB, and you're done! Embroider Buddy is seamless front and back, so it can be easily embroidered on either or both sides.
