Marj Easterling, owner of Big Lick Screen Printing, wins the Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce “Citizen of the Year” award.
While April may be the cruelest month for T.S. Elliot, it certainly isn’t that for Marj Easterling. In fact, it is fast becoming her favorite.
On the same day when she got her new copy of the Roanoker Magazine and found she was a Gold Award winner as the “Most Savvy Entrepreneur” in the readership area, she was also taken aback at breakfast when the Salem-Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce named her its Citizen of the Year.
“I was flabbergasted,” she said today. “Totally blown away. I didn’t even know I was nominated.”
Her company, Big Lick Screen Printing, had been nominated as the Small Business of the Year and when she didn’t win, “I was just so grateful for the nomination that I wasn’t disappointed … well, maybe a little bit, but I was in good company. It wasn’t a situation where I was sitting on the edge of my seat.”
The primary accolade in her selection for the citizen award was the Here for Good program she instituted at the behest of a colleague in St. Louis, who called and suggested it. The idea was to print up T-shirts for local businesses, sell them for $20 each and give half the money to the business. She kept the other half and “it was a win-win-win. Printing businesses raised hundreds of thousands of dollars nationally like this and, we didn’t go under. It saved us.”
Easterling’s little company alone chipped in $40,000 to local businesses with the program. “I wish my bank account would catch up” to the awards, she laughed.
The program, which became widely known, enhanced her company’s reputation in the region and next years, she says, “I hope to take over the world.”
About the Writer:
Dan Smith is an award-winning Roanoke-based writer/author/photographer and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame (Class of 2010). His blog, fromtheeditr.com, is widely read and he has authored seven books, including the novel CLOG! He is founding editor of a Roanoke-based business magazine and a former Virginia Small Business Journalist of the Year (2005).
