Keep It Simple

As owners of MikWright Ltd., a Charlotte, North Carolina-based greeting card company, Tim Mikkelsen, 45, and Phyllis Wright-Herman, 44, employ a group of friends and neighbors to glue old family photos to off-size greeting cards. The duo then writes humorous, snarky captions for the 1950s, '60s and '70s-era pictures. Sounds like a simple, old-fashioned kind of operation, right? Well, it is, except for the fact that the company sells its products in more than 10,000 retail locations around the world and generated sales of $1.3 million last year. Despite the fact that they could easily afford to mass-produce their products, the owners feel it's important to keep the same production methods they've used since launching the company in 1992. "There's not a machine that can guarantee the quality control that a human can," says Mikkelsen. "We're not looking to be this huge conglomerate. It would change who we are and what we do."