Just about every operation has their own secrets and we're no exception to that. From secret recipes to sexuality, company secrets seem to have a huge interest with the public. In fact there's a fascination with this. Sadly, a lot of this stuff is written by disgruntled customers or employees where there are sometimes half-truths, myths, or outright lies. Everyone has a right to their views. It is sometimes forgotten that businesses, no matter how automated they may
be has one or more humans behind them. People mess up. Now more consumers are sold on honesty than anything else, time is ripe for this. Who better to present some of our secrets than the company itself? There's been more than one time that the "moral fabric" of our operation has been questioned, especially since we're Christian owned. In honor of making it through the first 40 years we doing some of the bragging . Of course we are not telling all, but instead some of the more unusual ones. In honor of our first 4 decades, here's 40 of them.
For those visiting our SWMCA Mobile
website, this is the longest section in the website, but it's far shorter than the history section at our classic website (our original website), which wont get this section.
1. SWMCA' s original name was "Calligraph Stephen".
As funny as it seems, it's true, and not entirely without reason. Our founder had a speech defect that was severe. He could not pronounce the word calligraphy properly until he was at least 38 years old. That name, "Calligraph Stephen", was swiftly changed within a year and a half!
2. There is
church connection, but it's not what you'd think.
Our company was founded next to the narthex within Faith Lutheran Church
in Kansas City, Kansas. That was where the calligraphy books and pens that would be the beginning of SWMCA were handed over. Outside of that, there's no connection with the church. All decisions good or bad have been made by the company ever since. We've never been owned or operated by the church and as of this date, we still aren't. We
don't have any control over this [or any other] religious institution, just as they have no control over SWMCA's operations. The books and pens previously belonged to Doris Frickie (now Yonkers). With that said, actually we had two founders. She became a founder by giving our founder, the then 10 year old boy, Stephen what was needed to start that calligraphy stand which would evolve into becoming this company.
The church is located in McGrew Grove. Today this is the only "Faith Lutheran Church" known to us as currently serving the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
The church is located in Wyandotte County, Kansas. At the time of our founding there used to also be a Faith Lutheran Church in neighboring Johnson County, which where most of Kansas City's rich and elite live. It had operated in Prairie Village, Kansas and regrettably had their final worship service August 27, 2017. For decades many have wrongly
thought that the Johnson County church was the one SWMCA originated at, but it was the Wyandotte County one we originated in. For a long time Wyandotte County was billed as "the poorest county in Kansas."
3. The 'obsolete' final t has been included in some SWMCA script fonts -and:
it was used wrongly by the company for a long time. For generations there was a final t
used on words in cursive ENDING with the letter "t". It fell out of favor as the regular lowercase "t" could also be used, and this eventually became the norm. See; when you market fonts to the public be it for digital typography or to sell painted signs, your potential customer wants to know what they're buying. In the typographic industry, we use what are called type specimens
to illustrate this. That's where 'the quick brown fox' and 'the lazy dog' comes in. Also we use stupidly funny stuff or just plain gibberish for this. That's also where SWMCA was messing it up with the final t's. The final t is suppose to be at the END of a word ONLY. We were using it AT THE BEGINNING of words as well. In fact, in our [font] catalogs from back in the day, we didn't even call it a "final t". We instead marketed it an "endcap t" which could be used if either the FIRST or LAST letter of a word was t.
4. HAMBURGEFONTS is not a real word.
It was invented by the typographic industry so you could see more of the letters in each font. Later the Roman numeral for the number 4 (or IV) was added at the end by many foundries. Some designers and foundries use it exclusively, but the most common use is when time and/or space [when in print] does not permit for a standard type specimen.
5. SWMCA was incorporated as an LLC in part so we'd have limited obligations.
A major part of incorporating this way was primarily so we wouldn't be obligated by the State of Missouri to submit an annual report. Also we could avoid having to decide if we would be a S corporation or a C one right away, along with other messes.
6. The size acceptance movement inspired one of our brands in 1992, and two type catalogs were dedicated to this line.
No; we did not invent the word "Hamburgefonts", instead we created "Extrebold™" Just as DuPont® gave their brand "Spandex" to it's perspective industry, SWMCA in 2009 did the same with ExtreBold. Today any designer who draws a font to our specifications can call their font ExtreBold. The specs for ExtreBold is heavier than Heavy but not quite Blackletter for thicker manuscript display fonts and between bold and heavy for script and thinner designed manuscripts. The font can't be condensed and it must be a part of a typeface. ExtreBold is sometimes spelled as ExtraBold within the industry. DuPont created another unique brand; Lycra® for their own version of Spandex. SWMCA never did that with ExtreBold™.
7. All of our facilities were rented,given to us to use, or provided to fill the space.
Yes; SWMCA has operated in buildings over the years, but has never had any ownership interest in them. To last for 40 years, you have to had operated out of a building of some type for at least part of the time. But all of our facilities were rented, or well uh, "donated" space. Beginning in 2009 until 2016, the founders residence doubled as SWMCA's corporate office. We owned none of them; no, not even the chicken coup which was our very first building. Interestingly, we operated out of the chicken coup for a longer period of time than any other building. SWMCA has been trying to get ownership of it's own facility for at least 25 years without success. Today we're working on this problem more aggressively than ever before. We've even eyeballed the Jefferson River
dining car formerly used by The Milwaukee Road
railroad to serve as a general office until it was bought from under us, like most other properties we've considered. We we're hoping for Greenwood School on 27th Street in Kansas City, MO. The school district demolished this building aganist community wishes [and ours too] in 2019. SWMCA's lack of owning real estate has been a serious problem for many years, and is a major contributor to why it has had less value than similar operations.
8. Rumor
has it that the company may move to Detroit.
We did announce it on Facebook, and even today it is still a possibility, but would probably happen only as a last resort unless we got a deal too foolhardy to refuse. We're still exploring properties in Missouri or Kansas. We has never been based in any other area. Between the two states, there was a dual campaign for many years titled Buy MO-KAN First.
9. SWMCA never became an offshore entity; but yes, we've considered it.
At one point in late 2016, our founder was reading in amazement and had learned that his SWMCA contraption was actually worth more than Radio Shack® at that time. The 'shack ' as it was called by electronics hobbyists; went back to a 1921 founding and was internationally known -and was deep in debt. Yes our founder does read The Wall Street Journal
and like publications, and they do indeed tell it like it is. That's how he learned about it. Finding out about Radio Shack, Sears Roebuck & Co., and other long established firms or big household names (in America); having less monetary value than ours, definitely sealed the fate. That same year [2016] is when we dropped the word "Catalogs" from the name of the main company, and started reorganizing. It is what determined that newly revived company; would stay American like the original one, and permanently!
The Swiss bank account has been synonymous with the wealthy and large corporations for many years. We looked to get one, but were too small of an organization to consider that option. Remember; although SWMCA has existed in one form or another since 1977, we were not incorporated until 2014. By that time, the Swiss bank account was very widely used by those in the underworld and criminal organizations.
We had a hard time obtaining a bank account here, so imagine how harder it would be to get one overseas – unless, of course, we went abroad.
Especially in 2009; when we tried to decide 'what to do with SWMCA'; it seems to be abroad, almost an immediate solution. By then; We had been toying with that idea for almost a decade at that point. We could operate from the Caribbean Sea or something like that. We would have had a tax shelter, and we might have gotten away with a lot of things we couldn't here. Might have played with the 'big money boys'.
Still, we have to plan to build or rent an office, deal with laws and tax regulations that we don't know, either have to create an entity abroad to "own us," or partner with someone, that would create our dubious crowd among big corporations that paid low wages and/or bought from sweat stores, And worse, we could lose control of the company that took us decades to build.
Gradually as each year passes; More companies that went abroad regretted it. They are increasingly perceived as "leaving America," and not entirely without reason. The last thing we needed was to be publicly considered "anti-American"; when all of our principal operations have always been "home", here in the United States of America.
In addition, social conscientiousness; has become a concern worldwide, but no more so than in the United States. It approved for brick and mortar operators, and more so for online-only vendors, and then we were one. Many businesses that are abroad are known to oppose unions, living wages, small business interruptions, such as us, universal health care, among others. They looked to many more like bullies and enemies of the poor. Social conscientiousness and responsibility involves so much more than just caring about the environment. Apparently, quite a number of people have forgotten this.
We ended up staying totally American. When the value-added tax came, we registered as a Mini One Stop Shop with Her Majesty Revenue Commission [Her Majesty Revenue Commission] and we used the UK PO Box to collect and send the email [UK Postbox] from abroad. It was much easier [and cheaper] than actually going abroad.
10. Truman's hometown and mass transit.
Independence, Missouri is our kinda town. It's beautiful, has lots of historic buildings still standing, affordable, has wholesome values but yet is not too outmoded. A young couple would feel at home just as a old one would. Both crafts people as well as geeks and nerds get along here. It has a top tier school district that's one of the best in the nation.The problem is mass transit. The buses cut off at 6 pm in most areas of Independence and run only once an hour, which at best would inconvenience anyone visiting our office locally who don't have a vehicle. Indeed we are supposed to be headquartered in Independence,but the transit situation must first be drastically improved.
Many artists today no longer own cars or trucks due to their high operating cost. They arrive via Amtrak or the two bus services serving Kansas City [Greyhound & Jefferson Lines]. Rarely could they afford the airport (-and when they did, it was usually a one way ticket). Obviously they couldn't afford rental cars. Instead they go for rental or car sharing services like ZipCar [which was available in Kansas City for a few years but never in Independence], rather than deal with the hassle and expense of having their own ride. Yeah there is real meaning behind that classification 'starving artist'. The problem is since RideKC (formerly "The Metro") is only chartered to serve Kansas City, they must have a contract with Independence to give regular service there and in that case it's up to their [Independence's] City Council. The buses and the way they run actually IS the ONLY reason we're headquartered in Kansas City instead of Independence,Missouri.
11. We did have a corporate logo that contained none of our fonts whatsoever.
It was for our 30th Anniversary in 2007, and was used through the latter part of 2009. Our normal snowflake star style logo icon was replaced with a sun and heart, just to return a little under two years later. Except for that short period, the snowflake star had been in continuous use by the company since 1984, and is still used by us today. It was created in 1981.We used it on our corporate stuff; like stationery for instance, even when we did business as ABAI Websites. Our name in this particular logo was shown as Swmca/Abai exactly. It was purposefully done this way to show in advance our intention to eventually return back to the SWMCA name.
12. Our Bid, Love, or Sell online mini mall had only 3 online store names created by us.
There were four "stores" each with it's own name. One was an online auction which we had named asBargainFaire, another was a dating service with both regular and alternative personals (counted as separate e-stores) under the same name Nyte Hotts, and the last one was a traditional cut-rate online e-store aptly named Dollar Flex. A fifth e-store was added later that was higher end. It was called Pernickety Parlour. That name came from a women's clothing store at 95th and Nall in Leawood, Kansas. The store was probably there when the Ranch Mart Shopping Center was first built. It went out of business in 1999; we checked to see if the name was a registered trademark or still in use. Neither was the case so we adopted the Pernickety Parlour name to become our fifth e-store. We even used the logo salvaged from one of their plastic bags, but doctored up and with colors added. Bid, Love, or Sell was way ahead of it's time. In that era, few did online shopping. In less than 2 years BLS would meet the same fate as the women's store we 'borrowed the name from'. It's kinda weird that the land stores used to make a lot of online operations flounder, but today, the online stores are putting a lot of the land stores out of business.
13. pornvixen@goplay.com was the company's first e-mail address.
SWMCA went out of the way to distance it from the rest of our operations. It had a separate address with separate stationery. We even used a different kind of paper apart from the letter printed for all other parts of SWMCA.
14. For the first three years of Porn Vixen' s existence, SWMCA ran it along with Living Testimony In Christ.
Living Testimony in Christ was the company's Gospel Tract division. It would become Abatha Ministries and then was spun off. It did not become a religious organization until AFTER us at SWMCA no longer owned it. At H.A.R.T. Ministries (then on Broadway in KCMO) they lost their lease and Christmas 2015 was the last one at that location. This is also the time and place Abatha Ministries would meet it's final fate. The board of directors at Abatha Ministries, which had been separated from SWMCA for over 25 years at that time decided to vote itself out of existence and merge with A Splash of Life. a community organization located on Troost Avenue in KCMo. Porn Vixen began in 1986 and had been shut down since 1998
15. A complaint made about our specimens during the Clinton/Gore campaign would change the course of our operations years later.
SWMCA learned about picas this way. We were a sign painting operation that had to get what it could find. So the paints were toxic. There was no ECO Paint, or any like product sold in our area at the time. In 1992, Glidden Company produced the first VOC-free coatings. They cost more than conventional coatings, and consumers largely ignored them so they never made it to be sold ourside of a few test markets, and nether this or any other environmentally friendly paint made it into widespead use for about another decade. The only advancement in this area prior was that lead paint was outlawed in 1978.
It took gas to deliver the signs be it our founder's or someone he paid. Hemp board was widely used in foreign nations, but was prohibited in the United States due to Marijuana being declared as a Schedule 1 drug, thus making it or almost anything else made from it totally illegal. As a result; painting signs on hempboard instead of traditional wood, was out of the question. The two allowed products made of hemp were cloth and paper which were both very expensive, because they could be sold here but not made here, so anything with hemp was a import. Even today hemp board is still hard to get in the United States; though it's since been legalized, and is very pricey when it can be had.
No facility ever used by the company was originally intended for graphics. There was little or no energy efficiency and some didn't even have indoor plumbing. All of the equipment and furnishings were acquired used, and some of it was castoffs from the competition. None of it was Energy Star certified or anything close to being energy efficient or water conserving. Our founder worked on the Clinton/Gore campaign here in Kansas City. In fact this campaign resulted in creating the first SWMCA made political sign, which was right inside the arena entrance at Municipal Auditorium ...and years before we'd become more active in supporting organizing.
The campaign headquarters were in Manor Square, an old large historic bakery converted into a office building with a mini shopping mall. Down the street was a place called Whistler's Mother. The bottom floor was a bookstore selling rare and unique books. The upper floor was a coffeehouse. They had it this way in other areas, hundreds of miles away, but for Kansas City, this was the first. It wasn't too far away from the world's oldest waterbed store; which continues to do business today, Temple Slug.
Anyways; this coffeehouse happened to have blank books where you could draw or share your thoughts [and boy the people did]. These provided blank books were in fact the first public presentation of our fonts that wasn't controlled by us. SWMCA used the blank books to create specimens, usually sayings and short phrases in our fonts. One day someone who to this day remains unknown wrote a comment regarding SWMCA and the space it took up in these books. They complained largely of the picas used in the letter sizing. Amazingly, this individual, who obviously was a hardcore enviromentalist, didn't mention the pixels from the multi-colored specimens.
We haven't forgot, and this is one of the main reasons you can't buy our offerings at Sears®, Walmart®, or other land stores today. Today SWMCA is a very environmentally friendly company. Our dealer network consists totally of online e-stores instead of brick and mortar ones.
Our EULA's and other documentation has been put in Adobe® .pdf format. Our stationery is printed in very small batches, and the EULAs have already gone to Q-R code sheets so customers can read just the ones that pertain to them, or all of them. We use online translation, so we don't have to pay to have translators [who often drive cars].
The SWMCA of the 1990's however, when this all took place, was the furthest thing FROM being a green operation. As for the coffeehouse which supposingly closed when Starbucks® came to the Barnes and Noble® Bookstore on the Country Club Plaza, it is said that the lady owning it too off for Oregon (or some stories say Seattle).
SWMCA being a small business itself, aligned itself with this local coffeehouse and for many years openly blamed Starbucks for putting similar coffeehouses out of business. In 2015, we ended up using a nearby location of Starbucks for our business use. We found it to be very sensitive to most already established coffeehouses, particularly on the local level. They're a very environmentally sensitive company too. This was shortly after we incorporated. It's just too bad that they treat their employees like shit; especially those wanting union representation. Once we found out how terrible it was for workers; we quit using Starbucks, and reverted back to using the public library again.
What changed our viewpoint was there were two other coffeehouses within walking distance of the former Whistler's Mother location that are still in business. Both were in business at the time of Whistler's closing, and had been years before. One was Westport Coffeehouse, which had computers, but customers had to pay to use them. The other was the Broadway Café, which is actually a coffeehouse, not a restaurant or cafeteria. Neither sold books or had live bands playing at that time, and unlike Whistler's, Broadway Café within a year of this literally had a Starbucks right next door for many years. Starbucks ended up moving, not Broadway Café. It's too bad that Whistler's Mother is gone now, but when was the last time you've seen live music played at a Starbucks?
16. Someone wanted us to consider selling porn to keep one of our free fonts from becoming a toll one.
We're assuming that the comment was from a non-believer in Jesus. This user was disappointed that we planned on revising some of our free fonts and making them toll. In exchange for making the particular font toll, we were going to offer 2 free ones. This was [and at the the time of this writing still is] the most downloaded font,Tribal Play. We admitted in our EULAs of that time that we're Christian Owned. This "concerned" person is how Porn Vixen ended up among the company secrets in the first place. Evidently; whoever made the comment didn't go to our classic website (which was the only one at the time) and read the History section. It's been mentioned there since late 2012.
Many non-Christians believe that nobody believing in Christ would ever be secular with anything. That's the Family Values movement talking again. Oh did we mention that most members of swinger clubs in America and several other nations are either Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant? They can't really make such claims about SWMCA, trying to be perfect saints. Not only do we cater to the secular world just as we do the Christian world, -we actually tried porno. Most Christian businesses probably wouldn't, but we did.
We ran Porn Vixen from 1986 until 1998. That's 12 years! We also considered a return to porn in 2009, and again in late 2016. With what the current regulations are, and us having to comply with unique regulations for everywhere on Planet Earth except Antarctica and perhaps Santa's domain at the North Pole, it wouldn't be worth it.
Just to show one nanosecond of porn for the United States alone, we'd have to follow more regulations than both General Motors and Chrysler combined for an entire year. The worst that would happen with porn is someone might get offended or may get mad because their wiener wasn't satisfied long enough. With a car, even lessor defects can get people killed that are outside the vehicle as well as in it. Yet people those in porn get sued all the time because some dude's penis didn't stay up long enough. No thanks! We think we'll just let Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt have it. They can afford the huge fees associated with porn, and the the fines for violating the law for them are chunk change. Little ol' SWMCA can't afford either. For more info about Porn Vixen, visit our classic website and read about it in the history section of the website.
17. The ampersand was not originally included in all of our fonts...
18. Creating fonts for a living is not as easy as many think.
As you'll learn soon enough a carrer in typography (or for that matter being an artist in general) can be expensive. You will need training. Even if you forgo classes, the books to learn on your own are pricey. Then you have tools ranging from pens and brushes to light tables. Go visit several art supply stores -and LOOK at THOSE PRICES!!!!! To be known so you can sell, you want to belong to arts society.
There's plenty of these for you to NOT BE eligible for. Many are for specific purposes. Others require that you're initiated. It could even require that you're in a specific craft. Belonging to professional and trade organizations is also almost paramount to succeed in this business, and the more, the better. At least a minimum of $500 USD a year should be earmarked just for this purpose.
At some point you'll want to incorporate. This will likely be to buy at lower (down to Earth) wholesale prices or for tax benefits. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may be required by law to incorporate just to get a business license. There's not a single employee currently working at SWMCA (including it's founder Steve) who doesn't have employment elsewhere. Nobody here considers SWMCA to be their primary source of income. Keep in mind that our operations began in 1977, and we're now over 40 years old . In otherwords, don't be so quick to ditch your day job!
19. We guarded those fonts like a hawk.
At one point in the company's history; hiding [or 'protecting' as we called it] the fonts from the competition [both real as well as imagined], was given top priority over all else. For several consecutive years this was considered a major but necessary expenditure and almost 2/3rds of SWMCA's total operating budget was dedicated to this practice. Amazing now they can be purchased and downloaded by the very people we've been tying to hide them from for almost 3 decades.
20. The cursive used to be more uniform with SWMCA.
Until more recently practically all our script fonts used the Palmer Method for styling. There were a few exceptions. Today we also offer Spencerian as a single typeface and one typeface uses Roundhand. We plan to add Oriental, Engrossers, Copperplate, Lefty, and other styles of cursive in the future.
21. Any logo or mascot ever used by us is legally protected.
Those that aren't registered trademarks have been copyrighted. This is more important to you the consumer than ever before. It gives us the right to sue those using our marks an manners other than approved by us. That's great news for you the consumer, and not so great for counterfeiters. For the products we currently sell [downloadables] if we didn't protect our marks, then anyone can legally put them on computer programs full of malware and other not so good things for your device or computer. Sure it protects the company, but even more importantly, it also helps the company protect it's customers.
22. We plan to be here to stay.
A lot of bad things have happened to us in the past few years, and originally were winding down our operation to close down for good at the end of our 40th anniversary year, on December 31, 2017. It turned out our founder Steve was not ready to leave typography and really did not want to retire yet. The rest of our staff felt the same way. No fonts were offered for the year 2017, but watch, they're coming back in 2018. We plan on the first ones being offered by April or May of 2018. WE'RE BACK!!!!
23. From the beginning until current times, most all of the company's furnishings were acquired used or surplus.
From the very beginning, when those calligraphy pens and books changed hands from Doris to the ten year old Stephen, that was true. We bought a lot from Surplus Exchange over the years. Some of our equipment was bought at liquidation sales. Some came from garage sales. A lot of it was acquired at auctions, particularly Grimm's Auction. On the rare occasions where new was wanted or needed, Cargo Largo and later eBay too, were the only ones outside the graphics industry, we bought from on a regular basis.
24. One way the company plans on making revenue is by investing more.
Yes it's true, SWMCA plans on investing, but not on any ol' thang. What we will start investing in starting in 2018, is penny stocks. In particular the new cannabis stocks. We know some have their own ideas about marijuana, but it could really save this company, and even more importantly...human life. The USA is behind the rest of the developed world in education, manufacturing, healthcare, farming, alternative energy, and marijuana products and law reform. No wonder the USA is no longer at the top. Sadly we used to be #1 at just about everything, and with marijuana, we can be a top player in the world again [if it's done right], instead of being looked at as the world's greatest bully and everyone's enemy.
25. There's plenty of grants for arts businesses, but they're limited.
Extremely limited. If you're a sculptor, paint murals, or do select things in music, ya got it made. There's still plenty of arts where there's no grants and few scholarships for learning the craft. Typography joins neon and knitting in being an art where there is no established scholarship
for taking college or university courses. All
can take years to master! The only real established organization for this is IAMPETH. It was started in 1949, a full 28 years before SWMCA was. This is the remnant of what's left of an era when writing was important, for daily living. There used to be hundreds of penmanship schools in the United States.
26. A typeface is made up of two or more fonts ...sorta.
It's partly dependent on how they're sold.
With lithography and relief printing (which includes letterpress), EACH INDIVIDUAL SIZE is considered a individual font. With letterpress each character is set by hand. They usually carved out of wood or diecast in metal. A font in this case is all available characters for the particular size and a typeface is all available sizes even if it's a single style . Kroy machines and the like use this system as does changable font typewriters.
27. We learned about a local online competitor by accident.
When we decided in 2011 that we'd be returning to graphics full time, and then the next year to just start selling the fonts, we naturally were thinking a new name would mean a fresh start. Due to the fact that we were no longer a online information provider; and had no plans to become a hosting service for ourselves or anyone else, it would be very stupid for us to continue doing business publicly as ABAI Websites.
Originally were going to rename the company Kansas City Font & Typeface. We had enough sense to Google the name first. That's how we learned about our local competitor KC Fonts. We are based on the Missouri side of the state line while they are on the Kansas side of it. We ended up reverting back to using our historical and official name at the time, SWMCA Catalogs,
for public dealings. The name was finally changed to the current one SWMCA Brands & Holding LLC. in time for our 40th anniversary [2017]
28. We've never been associated with the mafia, but easily could've been.
For a brief period in it's history SWMCA went from being a sole proprietorship to a partnership. SWMCA had struggled even in it's early days and would have made the perfect front organization. It was the mafia's, the black market's, or druglords' dream come true. Nevermind the fact that with almost 200 firms in 6 states making up the competition, most of the industry as a whole that we were a part of didn't know we existed. At the time 96% of our rivals, including most of the locals, had never heard of SWMCA.
Hardly no one took us seriously during that time. Since we weren't incorporated at the time, so many who knew of SWMCA, in both government and the business community as well saw it as more like a hobby, rather than a business. We weren't listed in the phone book, and didn't get our first phone number until 2009. We would have been the perfect front organization.
We had a partner that knew someone who had a connection with the Civellas (Kansas City's crime family). It might happened if it wasn't for Mafia actions around the time of our founding in 1977. Most notably, the River Quay bombings. Everyone including the homeless, and even kids in the Kansas City area knew about this. Current events classes OUTSIDE of Kansas and Missouri ate this up. It was international news because since our area is part of the Bible Belt, it was believed that stuff like that couldn't possibly happen here in Kansas City .
Sure we had the mob in the early days of K.C.'s history, but our head boss, Tom Pedergast, was more like a Robin Hood style of person. By the 1970's; the hard-hitting action was still in Chicago and New York, while the Indian Springs State Bank quietly bankrolled it. It was later known as the "mobster's bank of choice." The mafias were and still are mostly known for their murders. Although the Irish mafia is most known, there's a Amish mafia, a Black one, and several others that operate in America.
SWMCA's founder who still by agreement had majority control wasn't prejudicial, but wanted no part of this. The mob dealed heavily through the labor unions such as the Teamsters luckily, and even the much smaller Sign & Display Union didn't fool with operations as small as ours. At least there wasn't a plan needed to deal with any of the enforcers. SWMCA went back to being a sole proprietorship and remained one until we ultamently incorporated and became an actual company in late 2014.
29. Our survival in the early days was by taking jobs others wouldn't.
Keep in mind that this was before the franchise chains like
Fastsigns
finally became widespread in our area. We took on many jobs refused by almost everyone else. We did signs for a number of enities including a couple of nudist camps, a few nudist clubs and stripper joints [for interior signage], the local branch of
School of Metaphysics,
and of course an alternative rock radio station from Ottawa, Kansas.
That last one went by the monklier "96x" and would have been no big deal to brag about when it comes to jobs others wouldn't take, except for one thing... the call letters were KKKX. Many would assume this to mean "Klu Klux Klan eXtra" or something like that. What was forgotten and ignored was the very fact that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a government agency assigned those call letters. The radio station had no say in it, and this was a smaller station that didn't have the money at the time to get those call letters changed. Oh yeah, that was the sign that got delivered via Schwan's [frozen food] truck.
Now let's look at some Bible Verses, then afterwards, there will be something to think about, -especially if you're already a Christian! We didn't find a couple of Bible passages on this, we found 16 of them! Here they are:
Luke 19:20-26 And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds. (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.) For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
Ecclesiastes 2:26
For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God.
Job 27:13-17
This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty.
If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword: and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his widows shall not weep. Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver.
Joshua 24:13
And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat.
Psalm 37:7-11
Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off:but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be:yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
Ps 37:21 & 22
21. The righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth. For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.
Ps 49:10
For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.
Proverbs 13:19-25
19.The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil. 20. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. 21. Evil pursueth sinners: but to the righteous good shall be repayed. 22. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. 23. Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment. 24. He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. 25. The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.
1 John 4:20 ESV
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Genesis 1:26-27 ESV
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Luke 6:37-38 ESV
“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Luke 6:37-38 ESV
“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Matthew 7:1-5 ESV
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
James 2:1-26 ESV
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? ...
1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
What do these scriptures have in common?
First, they're all from the Holy Bible used by Christians. Second; millions use these "verses" to guide their lives everyday. Third; Not a single one of these Bible Verses guarantee the Christian that
they will only have to deal with other Christians. God DOES NOT PROMISE to send "only believers [in Christ]" to serve as customers, employees, or vendors for the
Christian Owned business.
Instead, quite the contrary.
In fact; when Christian owned commerce turns away 'outsiders' or play the 'judge and jury' game, they miss out not just on another opportunity to share Jesus or learn about other ways and cultures so they can better adjust to them, ...they also throw profits out the window. Over 85% of our competition from 1997 no longer exists in any form. [While we no longer do signage, we're still very much in business!]
Every last one of those that disappeared had a lot more money than we did. Many had expensive equipment, owned their own building(s), plus some of the larger ones had vehicle fleets. A few of these firms and shops had simply disappeared because the owner died or due to mergers, but most were closed because of being stuck in their ways and prejudices. Of particular concern was refusing to serve those believing differently than they do, in an effort to 'keep "the Devil" away from the business.' A quite common practice here in the Bible Belt.
As a result, they basically chased away some of the very folks that the Lord sent to keep them in business. We're talking about almost 200 firms that went out, and all except for 3 of them were Christian Owned. You don't have to listen to the "liberal media" or "left wing" to learn the importance of diversity. Jesus was the first one to preach it! Perhaps the phrase 'Let Go and Let God' should have just as much importance to the Christian Owned business as the Holy Bible does.
30. The reason parts of our classic website has cuss words is because our founder wanted it as if he was there in person.
Our founder wanted to tell the story of this company as if you were in his living room. It was more of a 'tell it like it is' style of speaking. Part of the reason for our express website was to provide a "clean edit" of our original website. Most but not all of the explicit language is in the history section of our classic website. None of the other SWMCA websites have objectionable language anywhere near what the classic website does. The principal and original purpose for our express website was to provide a "can edit' version of our website. Of all our documentation, only the Pirates' & Bootleggers' EULA
has any profanity in it. If this document applies to you, then ya probably deserve a lot more than a shock of such offensive language. Hey, at least we managed to include real actual pirate talk in this legally enforceable document.
31. The free fonts served a good purpose but did grave harm to the company.
Before the first year of operation was over, SWMCA had it's first typeface, Basic
[originally named Slimline]. For all those years we created some beautiful work. The only thing was the fact that what we specialized in were signpainter fonts. Most of our creations were never intended for computers. We were great at drawing fonts... -and lousy at digitalizing them. We had experimented off and on since 2003, but didn't get real active with it until 2011, about 9 months before they were first offered to the general public. This meant that our early works were unfit to be sold, but were fine to giveaway as WYSIWYG [What you see is what you get]. This would also get our name out there. Both the regular pastor Ken Nettling as well as an associate pastor, the late Arnold Holtz at Faith Lutheran where we originated, also convinced our founder with conviction to make this move through moving sermons on the subject regularly. Both preached "always give something for free".
The following year in 2013 we sold our fonts at retail. The problem was that everything was branded as "SWMCA Catalogs" regardless of if it was free or you had to pay for it. Our brand for free and budget fonts then was American Font Smorgasbord, and it wasn't rolled out until 2015. We had to do it because our main professional organization, the AIGA
[American Institute for Graphic Artists] as well as practically all unions frowned on the practice of giving freebies. Because the company was by that time incorporated as SWMCA Catalogs LLC. which was also used for both free and toll fonts, we ended up cheapening the company. We created the Happymyde Fontz
branding to replace our SWMCA Catalogs brand. We began to reorganize the company and ended up renaming ourselves
SWMCA Brands and Holding LLC., which still preserves the much cherished 'SWMCA' part of our previous name while still giving us an new
identity.
32. The 40th anniversary year [2017] turned out to be the worst in the company's history.
We couldn't afford a Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit, so all of our websites had to be rebuilt to meet ARIA standards. The whole company needed to be reorganized , which meant rewriting all the EULAs We had serious problems keeping stuff paid. We guessed real hard at the invoices on who was owed what and prayed we were right. Then came the question of what order everyone should be paid. There were issues regarding the netrings along sith dealing with the new VAT laws. Some usb drives turned up missing early in the year which began what almost spelled the demise of the company. We were behind in general stuff and were limping along.
A year earlier we had a toll-free phone number until we lost it. Our out of date equipment was needing repair. The Fun Euro fiasco from a couple of years earlier didn't help much. It was a big debate on if the business should continue or not. Bankruptcy wasn't an option because we didn't owe enough to justify it. Paintfont was used to digitize almost all of the newer fonts, and now they had shut down. Our first true retail e-store had to close because scubbly.com went out of business. This meant the first e-store and two later ones at scubbly.com also closed. This included our extensions store for free font customers. Upon Scubbly's closure, our Oronjo e-store was converted into becoming the replacement extensions store. The SWMCA Catalogs branded products were supposed to be phased out in 2016 and now would continue into 2018. It was Murphy's Law to the extreme at SWMCA .
33. There were times when people wondered which Steve ran the company,
-McBride or Urkel.
The tv series Family Matters
had a character that was odd in almost everything he did, Steve Urkel . Our founder; also named Stephen and called Steve, was almost the same. Even today he's sometimes referred to as "the REAL LIFE Steve Urkel." Stephen has made more than enough unorthodox decisions in the course of his life. This was especially true regarding SWMCA. Sincewe were viewed and treated almost as practically nonexistent, this company has had to do a lot of wayward deeds just to stay afloat. SWMCA's survival pretty much depended on it. We had
to be creative in ways often labeled as weird at best. The company even today can still be "off the chain" at times, but it's a WHOLE LOT MORE CORPORATE than it used to be.
34. Some of the ideas for righting the company came from television.
SWMCA went through several names over the years, but changing it to save the business wasn't our idea. The credit actually goes to Jon Taffer. You can learn a lot from Bar Rescue. The Profit with host Marcus Lemmons, and several other shows from both PBS and RFD-TV are also 'combed' for ideas.
35. Christian ownership doesn't make us better than the rest.
Being Christian owned doesn't make us better than the competition. It simply means we turn to Jesus Christ in prayer regarding crucial decisions affecting the company. Our company had some human intervention in it's founding just like everyone else. We've made quite a number of weirdo styled moves throughout our history that we probably wouldn't do today .
36. We are thankful for our fine competitors.
Our competition shows us the latest typographic trends, and gives us someone to compare ourselves with. There's no way we'd be around today without our fine competitors.
37. We used whatever we could get our hands on:
-including some kids toys in our operations.
We used both stamp kits, and toy typewriters, marketed to kids and child care centers. Starting in the 1990s this was true with some of the art supplies as well. We weren't going to dare let our one and only Underwood be shared by those going to the field. Other non-electrics were too expensive for us. The answer? Toy typewriters; mostly of the dial type. Oh yeah, all but three (3) typed only capital letters. We generally had users put carbon paper over the paper they were going to type on, so we wouldn't have to worry about buying ribbon or additional ink.
Of course when they {the dial typewriters} first came out in the late 1800's, they were sold as office equipment. The first dial typewriter was one called the Simplex. Around the Great Depression [1929]; they marketed them as toys, keeping them in business until the 1960's or '70's. The biggest manufacturer of dial typewriters was Louis Marx and Company;
a toy company, which also competed against Lionel
for toy trains.
Today there's some serious money in these typewriters. At the time not even the antique malls [a relatively new concept in those days -at least in the Midwest] wanted them. If we took it to a scrapper; we could get 10 to 25¢, not a piece or each, but for all of the ones that had metal. The plastic ones weren't even worth that. This made it ideal for us. If one got lost or stolen; we could get them replaced for about a dime a dozen [literally].
Now the Paymaster machines; [we still have some of those too] were a different story. They were [and still are only for professionals] That was our concern regarding the migrant hires. We would hold back a certain amount of pay until these were brought back. Paymasters never did use electricity either (at least not the ones sitting on office desks. Most of the migrants were from Mexico. It was not uncommon to have villages and towns with no electric power there in the 1980's and '90's. And sometimes they had electric -but only for the streetlights -and schemes like that.
What we did was simple. SWMCA paid them with 2 money orders. If you didn't bring our stuff back; within 6 months, you didn't get the second one. We lost a number of the typewriters -and sold off some of those remaining -but not all of them, when we ceased being a sign company anymore. The ones we kept are still being used by the company; not for receipts or other corporate documents (like in "old times"), but instead to type the names on font original drawing pages -so if they get misplaced, we know exactly what folder they belong in. We also use hand stamps kits; for stuff we can't get into a typewriter (like fonts painted on cardboard).
38. Funnier banking with Redneck.
With those of color, there's been issues regarding the word "redneck"
for years, and rightly so. It conjures up the Confederate flag and slavery which many feels it represents. We've never pitched SWMCA as being "Black Owned". With exception to a short lived Be Proud to Be Black
promo in the mid-1980's, we've left the race issue out of our business until the Ferguson, Missouri riots. When it was finally addressed, we called the business "Ethnically Owned and Operated."
In our crisis of the moment, Redneck Bank
wasn't the obvious choice for our situation, it was the only one. That decision was made to keep us in business. It had nothing to do with elevating the White man, or attempting to fit in with them.
In fact Douglas National Bank, which was KC' s only minority owned bank, was the very first financial institution we went to. Their ways of doing business during those days definitely weren't our cup of tea back then...-and it was a lot more shady. This bank could not blame it's founder, who was one of the most savvy businessmen of his day. Douglas State Bank was founded by real estate agent Don Sewing in 1947 so that Negros in Kansas City could get home loans. It was the nation's 17th largest Afro-American owned bank in the United States at the time we looked at it. This was one of the region's best banks until they surrendered their state charter for a national one. The FDIC would eventually declare this historic bank insolvent and found new leadership for it. We looked at Douglas in 2007. Less than a year later, the Office of the Comptroller declared the bank insolvent and closed it naming the FDIC as receiver. Today they are Liberty Bank and Trust
of Louisiana, and we'd most certainly consider them today. While it's still minority owned, it's no longer a locally owned bank.
Back in 2007, we wanted to do more, which meant opening a bank account [or trying to]. Our founder had always insisted that his personal account be at a different financial institution than SWMCA's, and still does. All the banks we ran into wanted various verification we didn't have. This was the catalyst to a gradual series of events that lead to SWMCA eventually getting incorporated. In the end we ended up going with Redneck Bank
in 2009; simply because they were the only online bank of the time, meeting our needs, where we qualified for a account. Back then Redneck was strictly personal banking. Since we were still a sole proprietorship during that time, we could do stuff like that.
39. A lot of what on our websites is from the past.
Go to the homepage of any of our websites nowadays; and near the logo area it tells what "SWMCA" stands for, Stephen Wayne McBride Calligraphic Agency. Many would appreciate knowing this. This is nothing new though it did not appear on our websites until late 2016. It used to actually be on our letterhead decades ago. The amount of space it required and being hard to read due to postal
regulations regarding the size of return address, this feature of the letterhead ended up being abolished.
In fact we were using FHWA series alphabets
(commonly known as Highway Gothic) beginning around 1980, years before other people. It was and still is our founder's favorite typeface, although he didn't create it. This is why it is so widely used by the company even now. It was easy to read too. Our founder
preferred this font so much, it was used despite about two decades of doing paste-up for the
privilege. Back then it was actually illegal for anyone other than construction companies and government agencies to use it [...at least it was in the United States]. Highway Gothic was first drawn in 1945 as a all-caps typeface {except for "F"series} for the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, known today as the Federal Highway Administration. Of course we also use
derivatives such as Pavement JNL, Interstate
on occasion, and also Expressway
for languages not supported by the previously listed fonts.
The word "Catalogs" was done in an un-named 1940's font now distributed as Easter Parade, which was originally drawn by Hunt Brothers, not us. Although the word "Catalogs" has been dropped from our name and logo, the Easter Parade font is still used for the titles of each section of our websites, including this one.
Kasse FLF
was used for the dashboards in vehicles by the Ford Motor Company
for almost two decades before being replaced. This font has more than proven itself and is now used for
navigation controls on our classic and express websites, as well as on our corporate only website.
The idea of having a separate page just for the menu alone was invented by us in 2003 and we still use it today for our classic and express websites. The
only difference is that the "Navagation Bar" at the top is no longer marked as such.
Instead if you go to a section by mistake, clicking on the title serves the same function now and will take you back to the menu. We also invented the world's first generic website.
40. A lot of our fonts and typefaces are drawn -not written.
Almost all of our fonts are drawn by hand before the digitalization begins.
Congratulations: you've made it past the original 40 company secrets!
Now here's the other 5. Lets do a font change to set them apart.
41. We got newer equipment; that ended up being worse than that, it was to replace.
Two of the new mini pc units [both of the same brand] smoked when plugged in. We ended up removing the hard drives, the sending them out for immediate recycling. We didn't even keep the rest of the parts. Others we couldn't get operation systems on, and all were running slower and freezing up more often than the equipment it was meant to replace.
New 'lightboxes' so small that a sheet of 8'' x 11'' of office copier paper would be bigger. An Linux cloud system we can't use. because it didn't come with a smart card. A large key keyboard to make us compilant with the American disability regulations, that quit working after just two weeks. Other stuff too. We went over budget for this new equipment, and it wasn't cheap either.
We are so thankful that we weren't in a rush to get rid of our old equipment.
42. Our most expensive typeface; has fonts with far fewer characters, than we usually offer.
That's because it was intended for cemeteries. The Headstone & Memorial Plaque Typeface was named for the purpose. Each font was also designed to look ackward and out of place in haunted house or Apocalypse type settings.
We haven't forgot about several typefaces overused, and often for purposes not intended or designed for. This leads to the second deterent. We didn't design characters not in use on burial grounds.
The third thing we did was to make it the highest priced typeface we offer.
The fewer people that can afford the font, the less likely it will be misused.
43. We turned some heads with the naming of some fonts and typefaces.
We weren't the best (at least morally) with naming some of our fonts.
The fonts that got the seeder or obscure names were usually -but not always those that might have been otherwise written off by those in the business community, a font we felt would only be widely used by those on the fringes of society, those outside of the norm of what would typically be offered to the public, along with those we couldn't determine another socally acceptable name for -particularly those that were experimental or had a much higher percentage of characters with what most of the graphic industry would judge as design flaws; for their time of creation. Some of our earliest handwriting fonts like Cawgale were named that way too. It was made out of cries for the right to unionize; and fair government treatment for sex workers.
Later on we did it for activism too, Cawgale {just mentioned} was the first one in fact. The Livinsux Fhormi typeface [created starting in the year 2000] is an excellent example. The typeface was made and named the way it was to hopefully bring about awareness to mental illness, depression, desire of suicide among the poor; with great emphasis on the houseless or near homeless.
The names were often intentionally misspelled. On an eye glance; it was hard to tell unless you were really paid close attention. When you actually spoke the name aloud, then you got the actual intended name. We at SWMCA began the practice in the 1980's; and eventually were masters at doing this.
45. In response to the Ukraine crisis; originally we were going to remove Cyrillic from all of our digital fonts and typefaces.
-and finally:
45. We now offer styles we used to shy away from.
Traditionally we would design our cursives mostly from the Zaner-Bloser or Palmer methods. If you would have asked us to create a bounce cursive or graffiti font around 2012 when the first SWMCA font was offered to the public, we would have laughed at you. Like any other business, we have to follow the wants, needs, and desires of our existing customer base -in addition to those of potential future customer. Today we several fonts in styles that would never qualify as calligraphy or sign maker fonts.
All good things must come to an end! Just in case your curiosity begs for an comparison between the
Zaner-Bloser
or
Palmer
methods of writing, a sample of each is right below this paragraph.
See ya next time!
