The Band-A-Board began in response to the "hot" craze of T-shirt and fabric painting in the late 1980s. One of our subsidiary companies was already converting and packaging glitter for the fabric art market, and we wanted to add products to the line. We hired a craft consultant to design a shirtboard so a T-shirt or sweatshirt could be slipped over it for decoration. The shirtboard would prevent paint from bleeding through the fabric from the front onto the back of the shirt. As the design of the board progressed, our president had an idea: Why not strategically place notches on the board to align a jumbo rubber band over the shirt and the board so the shirt would be secure and in place while the crafter decorated the fabric?

A prototype was made and tested. Our patent attorney did a patent search. We applied for a patent, and it was granted a little over a year later. We named this new product the "Band-A-Board," and we developed the necessary tooling and artwork. We hired a major corrugated company to print, wax, and die-cut in two-up sheets. Minimum production was two semi-truck loads at a time.

Sales continued as the fabric painting craze proved to be a long lasting one. Some chain stores even purchased as much as an entire semi load per order. This product has been in crafts stores throughout the United States for a number of years now. In October 1999 we sold all our craft related product lines (several million dollars in annual sales and over one thousand SKU's) to a larger company in the same market. Included in the sale was this product line.