Article appeared in the Oct 20 issue of the Interlake Spectator…
Cheryl Zelenitsky purchased Harbour Engraving in 2004. It came with a computerized engraver, a metal shear, and some basic supplies. She has since invested upwards of $50,000 in the business. She built an 860 sq. ft. workshop behind her Winnipeg Beach home, added more state-of-the-art equipment, and now it is ‘the skies the limit’ for her. In October, Zelenitsky had to rename the business, Harbour Engraving, Signs & More, to reflect the fact that she has diversified and expanded. Just how far she has come in seven years is one of Winnipeg Beach’s encouraging success stories.
Zelenitsky worked in the graphics field for 15 years as a negative retoucher at Josten’s Canada. She later took a course in Photoshop at Red River Community College, and became proficient in Corel Draw, favouring it over Adobe Illustrator. She learned further skills through on-line sources, videos that came with her equipment, technical support, and through trial and error.
“I’m artistically inclined. If I could have, I would have been a graphic designer, but in 1979 (after graduating high school) it was a very male dominated industry. You basically had to get in on the ground floor,” she said. “You had to know someone.”
Zelenitsky works at her business full time, with a part-time worker, and business has been booming. Her biggest contract is through the East St. Paul Summer Soccer Classic, for which she is customizing over 1,000 trophies and medallions. She is also creating full-colour logos on metal plates for the organization. She does this using a special sublimation printer and a heat press.
Sublimation, Zelenitsky explained, is a process that uses a combination of special inks, heat and pressure to imprint images onto a specially coated material, whether glass, metal, plastic or wood. She uses the same process for imprinting full colour on items, like cutting boards, ceramic plates, mugs, piggy banks, and creates t-shirt decals.
Zelenitsky can do custom designs, including decorative wall decals, in 46 colours, for the home decorator. She specializes in novelties and promotional items such as tote bags, t-shirts, jackets, leather brief cases, Frisbees, pens, and water bottles, plaques, and name tags, “basically anything that can be personalized,” she said, “Everything can be customized.”
She recently purchased a Xerox Phaser which enables her to do full-colour business cards affordably, at about $100/1,000. However, she is celebrating the arrival of her new equipment by offering 1,000 color cards for $75.
In addition to having the capacity to create “massive quantities” of flyers, brochures, letterhead, and 12” x 18” laminated posters, Zelenitsky is also set up to create large indoor and outdoor signs of any size, in either wood, plexi-glass, acrylic, coroplast, vinyl banner material, or Dibond, a powder-coated aluminium that has a 10-year life span.
All this, and more, happening in her back yard in a building that looks like nothing more than a good-sized garage, is really quite remarkable.
A full range of offerings can be viewed on-line at www.harbourengraving.com.
