.png)
.png)
What started as one quiet idea is now 30 years of intentional craft.
It started in 1996. Gerald Karst Sr. had just retired, was looking for something to do, and got curious about a gap he kept running into — nobody local was doing custom embroidery and screen-print work well. So he taught himself. He worked out of the house, took on industrial clients, and built it slowly, one job at a time. That was Karst.
In 2003, his daughter Michelle came home from seven years in the Nashville music industry. She'd been a graphic design kid before music pulled her sideways, and she figured she'd try selling some of what Gerald was making. She opened the phone book and started calling. Her first sale was water bottles for a gas company owner's kid's hockey team. Small, specific, real—prime for learning the ropes.
When Gerald stepped back not long after, Michelle took over the day-to-day. Then the whole thing. She kept what was working — the care, the relationships, the standards — and slowly built around it. Built in a novel, different way. New software. Better processes. Bigger clients. None of it fast. All of it deliberate.
Twenty-two years later, Karst is a women-owned, WBENC-certified national agency running 60+ brand programs out of North Charleston — with 98% client retention and average client tenure north of 12 years. Most of those relationships started small and grew the same way the company did: one good project at a time.
The fundamentals haven't changed. The bar has. Strategy and design do the heavy lifting — and retail-quality is what happens when they're done right. We still pick up the phone. We're still allergic to tchotchkes.
.png)
