When you order from Aderholt Customs, there's a lot more happening behind the scenes than a laser engraving a tag and a package showing up at your door.
There are mockups being made, customer messages being answered, orders being engraved and packed, cows being checked, schoolwork being done—and occasionally somebody dropping everything because a cow has decided she belongs somewhere other than where we put her.
It's probably not the most conventional way to run a business.
But it's ours.
And since we've never really told the whole story, we thought it was probably time.
It started with me.
Aderholt Customs started as a business I ran myself.
Like a lot of small businesses, it didn't begin with some grand plan for what it would eventually become. It started small, and over time it grew into something my husband, Troy, and I built together.
As the business grew, so did everything else going on in our lives.
We were raising our family.
We were building our herd.
And somewhere along the way, Aderholt Customs became a much bigger part of our lives than we'd probably imagined when it started.
Then Troy started working on the road again.
And that presented us with a pretty big decision.
We didn't want to choose between the things we'd built.
We had the opportunity for me to travel with Troy for his job.
But there were a few problems with that.
There was Aderholt Customs.
There was the herd we'd been working to build at home.
And there was our daughter.
We didn't want traveling to mean walking away from the business we'd spent years building. We didn't want to sell the cattle we'd worked hard to build either.
And when we decided I would travel with Troy, we also made the decision to homeschool our daughter so she could travel with us.
We wanted to find a way to make all of those pieces work.
It wasn't going to happen without help.
Fortunately, that's one thing we have a lot of around here.
Family.
Everybody stepped in.
Our sons took on more responsibility caring for the cows at home.
And our son's fiancé, Karley, stepped in to help with Aderholt Customs.
At first, that meant working alongside me and learning the things that happen behind the scenes.
Mockups.
Customer messages.
Orders.
All the little details customers don't necessarily see but that have to happen before we can make anything.
Eventually, she learned just about every part of the business.
For quite a while, Karley and I were both answering messages and working with customers while I continued making the orders.
Some of you probably talked to both of us and never knew it.
And because nothing in our lives fits neatly into separate little boxes, Karley didn't just end up helping with Aderholt Customs.
She helps with the cattle too.
She regularly checks cows while we're away.
And several times she's had to stop whatever she was doing for Aderholt Customs because a cow decided she no longer needed to stay in the barn—or the pasture—where we left her.
Apparently “other duties as assigned” sometimes means dropping what you're doing to put a cow back where she belongs.
It's a pretty good example of how our family operates.
There isn't really a hard line between the business, the cattle and the family.
When something needs done, somebody does it.
But there was still one problem.
Karley could help from home.
Our sons could care for the cattle.
But Aderholt Customs still had actual products that needed to be made.
And I was going to be traveling.
So we came up with what might be the least conventional solution possible:
We took the shop with us.
Not just a laptop.
Not just the paperwork.
The actual shop.
Yes, we really put three lasers in a fifth wheel.
We bought a fifth-wheel toy hauler.
The toy hauler had a garage, and that garage was big enough for us to turn it into a traveling Aderholt Customs shop.
So that's exactly what we did.
We outfitted it with three lasers and the equipment I needed to continue making orders on the road.
And off we went.
While Troy worked, our daughter and I traveled with him.
She did school.
I ran Aderholt Customs.
And depending on where Troy's job took us, I might be working on a customer's mockup or making livestock tags hundreds of miles from home.
That's why some longtime customers may have noticed something a little strange on their shipping labels.
New York. Montana. Missouri.
And plenty of other places that probably made you wonder:
I thought Aderholt Customs was somewhere else?
You weren't imagining things.
Your order really was made there.
It gave us something more important than a conventional business.
Was running a custom-product business out of a fifth wheel the easiest solution?
Probably not.
But it allowed us to do something that mattered to us.
I could travel with my husband.
Our daughter could travel with us.
We could homeschool her and experience places together that we wouldn't have otherwise.
Aderholt Customs could keep going.
And because our sons and Karley were willing to step up back home, we could keep building our herd rather than having to sell what we'd worked so hard for.
We didn't have to choose one part of our life and give up all the others.
We found a way to make them work together.
It hasn't always been neat.
It certainly hasn't always been easy.
But we've made it work.
And now we're changing again.
That's one thing we've gotten pretty good at.
As our circumstances change, everybody's role changes with them.
These days, I'm back to handling more of the customer side of Aderholt Customs from the road.
I'm working on your mockups.
I'm answering your messages.
I'm helping you figure out what you need.
And Karley has moved into a different role back home.
She's making the orders.
Engraving.
Packing.
And learning all the little details involved in taking the mockup you approved and turning it into the finished product that arrives at your door.
And it's working.
One thing we're especially proud of is how much we've been able to improve our turnaround time over the past year.
We've always tried to get orders completed as quickly as possible. But the reality of a small family business is that there are still only two of us handling a lot of different jobs.
The same people answering messages and making mockups are also engraving, printing, packing orders and handling everything else that comes with running the business. And sometimes, as you've already learned, one of those people has to go deal with a cow.
Changing the way we've divided the work has made a big difference.
With me spending more time focused on mockups, messages and the customer side while Karley focuses more on production back home, we've been able to drastically reduce our turnaround time over the past year.
We still won't promise that every order will leave tomorrow. Custom work takes time, busy seasons happen, and we'd rather make something correctly than rush it out the door.
But we're always looking for ways to get your order made and headed your way sooner without sacrificing the care that goes into it.
For a two-person operation wearing a whole lot of hats, that's something we're pretty proud of.
So the next time you order from Aderholt Customs, there's a good chance the process looks something like this:
I work with you on the order and mockup from wherever we happen to be.
You approve it.
Karley makes it back home.
Your order gets packed and shipped.
This is what “family-owned” looks like around here.
“Family-owned small business” is something you see written on a lot of websites.
For us, it isn't really a marketing phrase.
It's quite literally how Aderholt Customs continues to operate.
It might mean one of our sons feeding or checking cows at home.
It might mean Karley standing at a laser making your tags.
It might mean me working on your mockup hundreds of miles away while our daughter does school nearby.
It might mean Troy coming in after a long day at work and hearing about whatever customer, equipment, business or cow problem we're trying to solve that evening.
And it usually means that when one person needs help, somebody else steps in.
Aderholt Customs may have started with me and then grown into something Troy and I built together.
But it certainly isn't just the two of us anymore.
It takes all of us.
And we're pretty proud of that.
And then there are you.
There's another part of this story that would be pretty easy to overlook.
Our customers.
None of this works without the people who continue trusting our family to make something for theirs.
Some of you have ordered once.
Some have ordered year after year.
Some have sent friends our way.
Some have shared our posts.
Some have sent pictures of cattle wearing tags we made, kids showing animals we've made things for, dogs wearing our tags, gifts being opened, or products being used in ways we never would have thought of ourselves.
Every one of those orders has helped our family continue building this business while also building the life we wanted around it.
We don't take that for granted.
So if you've ordered from us, recommended us, shared something we've made or simply followed along:
Thank you.
We're glad you're here.
And now that we've started From the Shop, we're looking forward to sharing a little more of what happens behind the orders.
The products, yes.
But also the people.
The cows.
The customers.
The stories.
The mistakes.
The lessons.
The unusual requests.
And probably more escaped-cow stories than any custom-product blog really needs.
— The Aderholts
Aderholt Customs
SEE WHAT WE'RE MAKING
From custom livestock tags and officially licensed FFA products to personalized pieces and some things you probably wouldn't expect us to make from an ear tag, there's usually something interesting happening around the shop.