Karen Gnaedinger had worked as a beautician for more than 20 years when her doctor recommended she quit. The Highland, Illinois, native was having health problems that her doctor believed were directly related to the chemicals she was using to style her clients’ hair.

She wasn’t sure what to do next until, in January 2006, she and her husband went to Las Vegas. They were attending a construction trade show for his job and happened upon a booth with a laser-manufacturing company. The lasers were engraving pictures onto marble.

From Perms to Personalization

Karen Gnaedinger Brings Her Creativity to Personalization and Gifts Shop Everlasting Etch.

By Barbara Platts

(Originally printed in the November/December 2024 issue of Insights.)

Karen Gnaedinger had worked as a beautician for more than 20 years when her doctor recommended she quit. The Highland, Illinois, native was having health problems that her doctor believed were directly related to the chemicals she was using to style her clients’ hair.

She wasn’t sure what to do next until, in January 2006, she and her husband went to Las Vegas. They were attending a construction trade show for his job and happened upon a booth with a laser-manufacturing company. The lasers were engraving pictures onto marble.

“I was just in total awe watching them engrave pictures into a 4-by-4 piece of marble,” Gnaedinger says. She kept going back to the booth at the show and learned about all the things a laser could engrave. She knew there were no personalization shops in Highland—a farm town with fewer than 10,000 people at the time. There were just a couple of people making trophies and awards.

“I told my husband that I could see that really being something people would go for,” she says. By the end of that day at the show, she bought a 12-by-24-inch laser engraver. Everlasting Etch, a personalization and gifts shop, began in her basement a couple months later.

Getting Creative

Nearly 20 years later, Gnaedinger still has that laser, along with two others, as well as a sandblaster and a sublimation printer. Her clients range from schools to companies and come from many of the surrounding towns and St. Louis, which is about 35 miles southwest. She even gets orders from other parts of the country, thanks to her website and Facebook page. However, she says the majority of her customers are found via word of mouth.

Her favorite part of working in personalization is also what she loved so much about being a beautician: She’s able to be creative.

“It’s creative either way, whether it’s hair or on products,” she says. “That’s a big part of it for me.”

Gnaedinger has personalized a wide range of products over the years, from a wrench that memorialized a mechanic to a set of wind chimes engraved with children’s names as a gift for their parents. She engraves a lot of stones, as well as signs and other decorative items for weddings and memorials. Currently, some of her favorite items to personalize are recipe boards and plates.

“I had a lady last year at Christmas who brought in pie plates and wanted to put her grandma’s pie recipe in her handwriting on them,” she says. “That was really touching. Just anything that’s unusual I really like.”

 

She’s also willing to work with people to try to personalize products she doesn’t sell in her store. Clients will text her photos of items they see while shopping to ask if she can engrave them.

“I always tell people I can’t guarantee what it’s going to look like if I don’t sell it because I don’t know what the material is, but bring it on in,” Gnaedinger says. She appreciates the weird things, like engraving crosses made of antlers found by a local taxidermist or driftwood for the 20th anniversary of a rivers research center.

 

Working from Home

Gnaedinger is the owner, founder, and main employee of Everlasting Etch. On some projects, her husband and son help her, but she is the one running the business from day to day. Her office, storefront, warehouse, and studio are all based out of her house, encompassing around 1,200 square feet. The lasers are now upstairs, and the sandblaster is stationed in the garage. The basement is where the trophies are made, a job that is typically taken on by Gnaedinger’s husband.

The Everlasting Etch storefront has a separate entrance from the Gnaedingers’ front door with its own parking spots and a sign out front to let visitors know where the business is.

“When you pull up to my house, most people think it’s more of a business than a home,” she says.

  

Gnaedinger has worked out of her home for the last 40 years. Her husband built the house to originally include a separate wing for her beauty shop. As she transitioned away from that career and toward personalization, the shop was very crowded. She still has a small room at the back where she will do haircuts for family and friends on occasion. Besides that, everything else is now for personalization.

“You can squeeze an awful lot in a small spot,” she says. She loves being able to run her business out of her house. She joked that when the COVID pandemic came around, others finally got a taste of what it was like to work from home.

“Everyone was finally getting on the bandwagon and seeing how fun this is,” she says.

Though, oddly enough, during the pandemic was one of the only times Gnaedinger didn’t work out of her house. Illinois shut down nonessential businesses starting in late March 2020. Because there were no events happening, Gnaedinger lost most of her personalization opportunities. Her business was mostly shut down for a year and a half. To pay the bills, and to keep herself busy, she took a job at Walmart for a year decorating cakes—another job where she got to use her creativity.

“[Decorating cakes] has always been my hobby, but I never thought I’d be doing it for a job,” she says.

      

Gnaedinger thinks having her business out of her home is one of the reasons she was able to pick up and continue as the pandemic neared the end.

“That was a blessing because I would’ve probably had to close down if I was renting a building,” she says. “I can see why other businesses would have had to shut down. If you’re not working and you still have to pay the rent, I don’t know how you keep going.”

Just Do It

Gnaedinger joined ARA (now known as APA) shortly after opening her business in 2006. A businessman who owned a small trophy shop in town recommended doing so. She’s glad she made that decision. She uses the APA Member2Member Forum for help finding items and getting tips. She also loves the videos and the education, especially opportunities to learn at the Expo.

“You can actually see the new equipment, get to see it working, and get some hands-on education,” she says. Her husband likes taking the classes and learning more about different techniques. He’s looking to retire soon and get more involved in Everlasting Etch, so she says the classes are helping him understand the industry better.

Gnaedinger thinks continuing to learn and keeping up with the latest trends in technology are two very important factors for someone owning a personalization business. For those just starting out, she also recommends finding your niche—something that makes your business unique—and knowing your community, what they like, and what they’re willing to spend.

“You have to know your area and your marketplace,” she says.

And, for those who are considering getting into the industry, she recommends taking the plunge.

“If you really have the heart for it, just do it,” she says. “Because if it’s something you love, you never go to work. I’ve never had to go to work even one day because to me this is fun.”

Barbara Platts is the managing editor of Insights Magazine. She has worked in journalism and marketing fields for the last 14 years and is excited to be learning all about the awards and personalization industry.

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