Juliana Feinberg is the founder and CEO (aka Chief Embroidery Officer) of Feinberg Ltd. embroidery studio (aka your favorite place for embroidery west of the Mississippi). Specializing in custom embroidery, live event personalization, chainstitch and monogramming, Feinberg Ltd. services companies such as Ballerina Farm, Crocs, Gozney and Dorai.
And that’s just this year.
Feinberg officially launched her company in 2020. At the time, she didn’t even own an embroidery-specific machine and actually blew her knee out the same month. Within three months, COVID-19 would crush the U.S. economy. Safe to say, not a great space or time to start a company.
“But [registering the company] gave me that North Star,” Feinberg says. “I wasn’t going to give up on it.”
Starting a company in a creative industry was always in Feinberg’s future. At age three, she redecorated her mother’s new white couch with a crayon rainbow. At nine, she set up a lemonade stand with a cousin and earned $200. Throughout childhood, she sold Girl Scout cookies door-to-door.
After growing up in Rochester, New York — and never having visited the West — she followed a hunch all the way to a campus tour around the University of Utah (the U). She was hooked when the guide stopped to show visitors the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute.
While attending the U, Feinberg became a director at the Institute, gaining early and pivotal leadership experiences. She also became an ambassador for ASOS, the online fashion retailer — a pursuit that fed her creativity.
“I just loved seeing what other people were working on, and seeing that we [at Lassonde] could give them an opportunity to advance as entrepreneurs,” she says. “But I also love fashion. I love everything about clothing, style and expressing myself.”
Feinberg graduated from the U with a bachelor’s degree in business management and began working at Goldman Sachs as an analyst. After a few years, she returned to the U for a master’s degree in entrepreneurial studies. Through it all, she experimented with various creative pursuits such as painting, jewelry crafting, clothing upcycling and even a bit of embroidery using a sewing machine she’d purchased in 2015.
“When I first got the machine, I was making bandanas for my friends. We were going to Coachella, and I would make little small things,” she says. “There was something about the texture that I just really loved. And then the machine broke, and I couldn’t get it to work for years. … I kind of forgot about it, because then I was dabbling with all these other outlets.”
With a graduate degree in hand, Feinberg continued her career in finance as an assistant VP at Zions Bancorporation. While sitting at work, she would often read Utah Business and dream of a venture that might land her in the pages. Her creative and entrepreneurial itch kept her testing out projects in her spare time until a fellow artist told her she needed to just pick a medium and stick with it.
A few months later, she was in an online course when someone mentioned embroidery.
“Out of the blue, I was like, ‘I want to get a new embroidery machine,’” she explains. “I bought a four-needle, and I just fell passionately back in love with the art. There’s something so classic about it. It’s unique. It’s playful. It’s a really fun, tactile medium.”
The itch to stitch
Nicole Procida, a project manager for Natural Retreats, met Feinberg at the U, and they’ve been friends for the last 10 years. While pursuing her own career, Procida has purchased, tested and witnessed every turn in the road for Feinberg and her business.
“From the minute I met her, she always talked about having a company,” Procida says. “She’s so personable and very fashionable. I knew she was gonna go places.”
Having witnessed the variations of Feinberg Ltd. live, Procida says the company’s entrance into embroidery and the live event space felt “kismet.”
Feinberg’s first live embroidery booth was a practice run at her local pilates studio. Hollie Mason, owner of The Point Pilates, noticed her clients loved using grip socks during classes. She knew Feinberg had recently gotten back into embroidery and asked if she’d be interested in hosting a custom embroidery bar at the studio so patrons could personalize their socks.
“We knew people were going to be into it, but I don’t think we knew how much,” Mason says. “There was a line out the door. She had so many socks, she had to take them home with her. It was crazy. … And I think that was a pivotal thing for her in the beginning of her business — very validating. This is a thing people want.”
A few months after the success with The Point Pilates, Gozney, a pizza oven manufacturer, hired Feinberg to do live embroidery for a corporate event. She brought a small design of a hand holding a pizza and walked into an event that would change her company forever.
“It was so much fun to bring the machines and watch people’s reactions,” Feinberg says. “It is why I love this job so much.”
Since then, the gigs and events have been nonstop; Feinberg has had to work out the kinks and finetune her in-person process on the job. Thankfully, Procida accompanies her to most events to help balance the art of embroidery with customer service.
Sustainability creative
Feinberg Ltd. is not only an embroidery studio but also a fashion brand. When business meets fashion, the conversation of sustainability is never far behind. Utah’s fashion industry has particular experience with fast fashion and big brands overtaking product, mass-producing and cheapening carefully designed and beloved pieces.
Feinberg’s personal ethics and interests have naturally driven her business toward sustainability. In fact, Feinberg Ltd.’s products began with Feinberg upcycling her own closet and thrifted pieces.
“She’s always been really into thrifting and flipping,” Procida explains, noticing Feinberg’s growing passion for embroidery merge with sustainable practices. “[She was] realizing that sustainability could be a bigger thing that encapsulates her whole company. … She was purchasing things from Savers and fixing them. Those clothes are not going to end up at the dump anymore.”
Feinberg also began upcycling some of the items she already owned with embroidery. Upcycled items became closet staples, and her customized embroidery transformed old clothes into lifelong heirlooms — one-of-a-kind pieces. Her creativity grew along with her ideas of what this path meant for her business. When she stepped into the live event space, she knew the same principles would apply.
“When you go to an event, and you get something, you’re like, ‘I don’t want this tchotchke,’ so you throw it away,” Feinberg says. “But when you have a take-away item that you want to use — and it’s personalized — it makes such a difference. You remember that experience. You remember that event.”
Mason says Feinberg Ltd.’s dedication to sustainability resonated specifically with her business. “It goes hand in hand with what we’re providing as a Pilates studio. We want to take care of ourselves, we want to take care of the Earth.”
As the company grows, Feinberg hopes to provide the customization and upcycling she delivers at events to anyone online. She’s playing around with a drag-and-drop system where customers can upload their own products to the website, then add various patches and embroidery designs. This new iteration of Feinberg Ltd. spreads awareness of the need for sustainability while empowering any customer to upcycle and create heirlooms in their own life.
“We’ve been calling it ‘clothing tattoos,’ because it really is just like patches all over. It’s such a cool way to create personalized items while using her designs, her thought process,” Procida says.
Currently, the Feinberg Ltd. website boasts bandanas, luggage tags and other various items for personalization. All products available are currently manufactured new by the company. Keeping with the mission to create heirloom-quality products, Feinberg says all her manufactured goods are of the highest quality.
“[Our products are] well crafted and withstand the tests of time. Quality and natural fibers are first for us. You don’t want polyester on your body. It doesn’t feel good,” she says. “I’m all about sourcing the best natural fibers so that we feel good. When we feel good, and we’re dressed in our own personalized product, it creates a ripple effect. We show up differently.”
Inspired by the Western sky
Feinberg Ltd. has flourished in the desert landscape, drawing its tenets from the beauty and craftsmanship Feinberg sees embodied in Utah. She leans into a rugged Western lifestyle that values quality, and her creations tell a story. Being “your favorite embroidery studio west of the Mississippi” is more related to emotion than location.
“There’s something about the vastness of the Western sky. It really does make you ‘feel a way,’ like anything is possible.” Feinberg explains. “I feel creatively inspired by [the Western] sunrise and sunset: the gradient tones all throughout the year, a sunset in the desert or against a snow-capped mountain. These are the colors that feel particularly grounding and like home.”
Local and international brands relate.
Feinberg embroidered aprons at a media day for Ballerina Farm this summer. She designed Jibbitz-esque patterns for an event with Crocs. For each client, Feinberg carefully considers her capacity for how many guests she can accommodate, creates custom designs using unique color schemes, and sometimes even meticulously sources quality products to be embroidered. Her preparation helps her stay cool and collected on event day, allowing her to spend one-on-one time with guests and especially the clients.
“Watching her these last few years, she’s problem-solving in such a different way,” Procida says. “She’s really molding things to match her own business and her own aesthetic a lot better. I think that’s why Feinberg Ltd. is doing as well as it is now.”
The next pivot — and the one after that
Feinberg isn’t likely to stop innovating. She’s one year into doing live events and already has a laundry list of pivots, paths and partnerships she’s excited to pursue. The art of hand-cranking a chainstitch machine would provide a uniquely vintage Western look to creations. A brick-and-mortar location would bring custom goods directly to locals and give Feinberg a daily opportunity to show up as an artist. Innovations in fashion technology spur new revenue possibilities.
“She looks at everything with these giant eyes; things can only get better,” Procida says of Feinberg. “She just started doing events, and she’s already thinking about starting a donation fund and a shelter. She has really bright ideas, and she has been one of those business people I’ve watched actually be able to make those ideas come true with time.”
As Feinberg Ltd. continues to grow and morph, Feinberg herself stays grounded in her intuition and wholly trusts in timing. Her advice to other young founders is to try everything.
“It’s good to have structure and a nine-to-five; take as much as you can from that,” she says. “But if you feel like you’re destined for something bigger, just go for it. You’ll figure it out on the way.”