Following is an excerpt from the article: Factory work crucial to her success

The variety allows her customers to find a gift that has a personal, individualized touch. But now, Gail Ahlers intends to go further. She is adding a new focus to her business by concentrating on custom-made, corporate gifts and awards, such as the one the Pawtucket Foundation recently presented to Michael Cassidy, the city’s retiring director of planning and development.

The handsome award shows cherry blossoms and the Pawtucket Foundation logo in a wide, wooden frame. This year was the first Cherry Blossom Festival held in Pawtucket, where a row of donated cherry trees now grace part of Roosevelt Avenue, so that’s why Ahlers said she included the blossoms, whose petals she cut from soda cans. The frame is made of reclaimed wood from a Pawtucket mill. “I am using a lot more recycled and reclaimed but extraordinarily high-quality materials,” she said.

For the Atlantic State Fisheries Commission, a regular client of hers, she has created gifts that members receive at annual conventions, such as a letter-opener in the shape of a fish or a key chain resembling a horseshoe crab. Such gifts “really have a completely different feeling than, say, giving them a baseball cap with your logo on it,” Ahlers said.

View entire article at PBN on line. Source PBN Staff Writer: Denise Perreault Photo: Brian McDonald