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| Business World Magazine |
November 2012
Hirschwouldadd tohis inventory, but by and
large, the early contraptions were designed
for use in larger, commercial enterprise.
Hirsch developed relationships with com-
panies throughout the world. After meeting
principals of Japan’s Tajima Industries, he
secured a distribution agreement involving
their specially made embroidery machines.
This relationship allowed Hirsch to provide
Tajima with insight into needs of American
customers and industry alike. In turn, Tajima
went on to engineer advancements involv-
ing thread trimming, color changing, multi-
needle heads and innovations that allowed
what was once done by hand, to be done by
machine; and the machines, like trends with
radios and televisions, didn’t have to be so
oversized.
With the emergence of computers,
came new capabilities that further changed
the playing field. At the time, the whole sys-
tem of converting an original design of art-
work into an embroidery still necessitated
manual labor (processes of “punching”) that
was meticulously time consuming. The digi-
tal revolution changed all that, and PulseMi-
crosystems was a company at the forefront of
technological developments involving soft-
ware essential to the design of embroidery.
The company was acquired by Hirsch Inter-
national which went public in 1994. Harry
Hirsch had passed away some years earlier,
but he lived and served through an amazing
era of innovation highlighted by incredible
technical advancements that altered indus-
try and offered consumers so much more
access to personalized goods. This history
is important because when one sees a finely
stitched monogram or business logo on a
shirt, it may not be readily observed that the