BERNARDSTON — From her home on Shaw Road surrounded by rolling fields and horse stables, Melissa Murphy crafts custom embroidered apparel for local businesses.

Murphy has operated Melissa Murphy Embroidery and Custom Apparel entirely out of the side room of her home, a setting packed with sewing equipment, industrial machines and boxes of clothes, since March 2024.

“I’m really looking to help both small and large businesses in the area,” she said.

Nearly a year after starting the business, Murphy has provided services to many businesses across Franklin County, including Smith Landscaping of Bernardston and the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Western Equestrian Team. She has also completed orders for customers as far away as California, Texas and Florida.

Two industrial Ricoma embroidery machines allow Murphy to do most of her work. She digitizes designs she receives and sends the templates to the machine for stitching. The process of digitizing and stitching designs on clothing usually only takes her around 30 minutes for small items and up to an hour for larger items.

Regardless of the size of orders, Murphy aims to keep the price of items equal so customers will not be afraid of higher prices when they’re thinking of placing single-item orders. Prices typically vary based on the amount of stitches per item.

When a design is ready, Murphy makes samples and has customers come to her home to see the completed product first-hand before delivery. To her, this is one of the best parts of the job, as she gets to witness customers reacting to their logo on the clothing for the first time.

“I want to make sure that it’s exactly what they were looking for,” Murphy said. “That’s probably one of the most important things, to make sure that our visions align at the end.”

Before starting her embroidery business, Murphy was working for the state when she decided it was time to make a career change. Murphy was inspired to begin supplying clothes for her husband’s company after finding that ordering custom apparel for the company was quite expensive.

“I thought that this could be a way for me to both supply him with apparel for his business and provide a service to the community as well by offering a little bit less expensive, but still quality apparel,” Murphy explained.

Murphy relied almost entirely on word of mouth and support from the community to help get the business off the ground. Most of her first orders were placed by friends, neighbors or family members who helped spread the word about her business endeavor.

Although Melissa Murphy Embroidery and Custom Apparel is operated by Murphy alone on a daily basis, she sometimes recruits familiar seamstresses to help her with larger orders. She also offers logo design services, which are done digitally by her niece in Michigan.

Being heavily involved in her local equestrian circle, Murphy credits the community with playing an instrumental role in building the business. Some of her first customers were horse barns in the Bernardston area.

“Having horse barns that trusted me to do their designs was awesome,” Murphy said.

Murphy hopes to ride this wave of success into 2025 and see even more substantial growth. Ultimately, she aspires to open a shop in town.

For more information about her services, visit melissamurphyembroidery.com.