ButtonStar started 1984 as a desire of father to get buttons for his daughter's youth basketball team. After failing to find a supplier, he started making them himself. He made personalized buttons for his daughter's team, but when others saw them, they wanted them also. Soon local high schools, colleges, and businesses starting asking for his buttons.
This father, Jerry Diekmann, and his daughters Rachel and Renae, made buttons part-time as Jerry worked a full-time job and the girls went to school. As the girls got into high school the business steadily grew as they used their small business to travel to basketball tournaments and sports events around the U.S. during the summer months and sold to local high schools and businesses throughout the year.
As the girls started going off to college, Jerry welcomed the help of his nephew Derick. Derick wasn't a button-maker, but a young genius at making websites. Derick and Jerry spent many months putting together the first ButtonStar website. When it went live, they immediately advertised it on Google and started receiving orders. As ButtonStar got more and more new and repeat customers, they became overwhelmed. Even with over 20 local students and part-time mothers from the neighborhood, they could not keep up with the orders and often had to take their internet advertising down to keep from being overwhelmed.
Today, ButtonStar has grown into a high tech business using the latest in graphic arts software for design; Xerox high resolutions color laser printers for color; Epilog laser and semi-automatic cutting equipment for cutting designs to size, and Tecre semi-automatic button making machines for assembling 1,000's of buttons per hour.
And now, over 23 million+ buttons later, Jerry still has a passion for a great looking button. Rachel graduated college and married Jason into the button making family. Renae's the fastest button maker, as she leads our production with a staff making 50,000 to 100,000 buttons per week. Customers include major political parties and campaigns, major league sports, local to international government agencies, U.S. and international fundraisers, 1,000's of national and international companies, retail businesses, and restaurants. And yes, ButtonStar is still growing as they still often take their advertising down to complete very large orders of 250,000, or 500,000+ buttons. ButtonStar may have gotten a lot bigger, but Jerry, Rachel, Jason or Renae will still answer the phone when you call.
