World Emblem is a global leader in custom embroidered patch manufacturing. It’s also a third-generation family business. In this interview, G2 CEO Randy Carr discusses how the company was reborn after hardship, how it has evolved since then and why humility, learning and forgiveness have been vital to his (and his son’s) journey in the business.
This interview originally appeared on the Family Business/Business Family podcast. Don’t miss an episode! Follow Family Business/Business Family on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Family Business: How did World Emblem get started?
Randy Carr: My father had a company doing what we do, which is manufacturing envelopes in West New York, N.J. He had some problems and, in about 1988, the company went under. He asked my brother and I if we wanted to restart the business in 1990. So, my brother and I left school and restarted the company in Medley, Fla. That was the beginning of this kind of journey.
FB: We don’t often hear about family businesses being completely restarted by the next generation.
RC: I was 17 when I started working here and we grew up doing rather well. I don’t know really why it went under. I can sort of guess, but regardless, we restarted the business from the ground up together. [My father] obviously leveraged the things he knew, the clients he had and the equipment and stuff like that. So, without him there be no World Emblem, for sure.
FB: How has the company grown and evolved over the years since then?
RC: Like probably every business, the [trajectory] looks more like a heartbeat than a straight line. There were probably more moments of terror than there were of success. I think, especially after kind of losing everything, you remember that more than success.
In 1993, we reincorporated World Emblem and started the Emblem Service Center in Medley, which is a suburb of Miami. Now, in 2025, we have 1,500-plus employees and a half-million-sq.-ft. maquiladora, which is a factory in Mexico that’s built to import, convert and export product back to the States under the North American Free Trade Agreement or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. We have two locations in the States that are 100-plus employees — in Florida and California — and one in Toronto, Canada. Plus, we have a factory in Spilsby, U.K.
When we restarted the company in 1990, my father at the time was in his 60s. He almost had to go back to zero, which was really terrifying for everybody. I was in my mid-20s and so much of my point of view was based on using technology, because it was the inception of the internet. So, the question at the time was: how do you bring that into this business that’s traditionally been archaic?
Then, I was fortunate to have certain people cross my path. Somebody gave me W. Edwards Deming’s book, “The Deming Management Method”— for those who don’t know, he was the gentleman that rebuilt Japan after World War II. So, we started implementing some of those principles into the business. Sadly, my father passed away in 2000. But I think documentation, standardization and using technology had a huge impact on the business.
FB: Were there points where you and your dad disagreed about the use of technology or your other efforts to modernize the business?
RC: Disagree? [Our arguments] were violent, I would say, almost fistfights! At the time, I could see the internet was going to be incredibly disruptive. That was like ‘96, ’97. But again, I was 26, I had no experience, I went to one year of college. So, there was like an hour out of a day where he would take me seriously and nine hours where I was just talking smack. We must have made some kind of breakthrough because we’re here. But, like I said, it was a heartbeat, not a line.
FB: That’s a good segue into my next question: What are some of the benefits to working with family as well as some of the challenges?
RC: The older of my two sons just joined the business a year ago. For me, it’s incredible to watch him come into the organization and be mentored by so many of the great leaders that I have here. I see a lot of the kids come out of school — a lot of his fraternity brothers — and they don’t have a trajectory. It’s a very confusing time between 20 and 30 years old. I see all of them confused. They don’t have jobs, or the jobs are sort of placeholder jobs until they figure out what they’re going to do with their career. So, for him to have the benefit of the mentorship in our organization, for him to be proud of where he gets to come to work is an incredible feeling for me.
The opposite side is that we tend to get into little arguments about things that he’s not happy with in the business. And he has every right to be just like any other person that works here. The reality is that, in my role as CEO of a 1,500-person company, my voice is very loud. So, when he brings [work issues] up at home, I have to give him space and not really say much other than, ‘Have you spoken to your boss? Have you spoken to your supervisor?’
And when he tells me things, I have to be very careful how I communicate it through the business, so that he doesn’t look like a rat. So, I’m learning how to work [with him] and I’ve had to apologize to him a couple times. I’m just like, ‘Dude, I’m learning this with you. I don’t want to damage my relationship with you as a parent and a son. That’s more important than the business.’ So, it’s just very interesting now. I didn’t have that with my father. We were battling every day.
FB: Well, it’s a credit to you guys that you are acknowledging that you’re not perfect. You’re still figuring it out, but you’re trying to learn how to navigate it. That’s a tightrope, right? That line between family and the business.
RC: I think part of the culture of the business, regardless of whether it’s me and my son or anyone else, is to be a learning business. We’re humble, we make mistakes, we learn from the mistakes. I want my son to learn that you can always rectify [a mistake] if you’re humble, but you’ve got to be willing to say you screwed up.
I had conversation with him like two months ago. He was really upset with me because I went to his boss. And so, he he called me out and I said, ‘Dude, I apologize.’ I said, ‘Look, I’ll work on this.’ And I didn’t make an excuse.
FB: So, what does the future hold for World Emblem? Is your desire to remain family-owned forever, if possible?
RC: If somebody came along and said, ‘Here’s a check for three times more than we really think the business is worth,’ you’ll see my mannequin through the door. But I don’t know how often that happens. I think those are edge cases. Right now, my son is the third gen, I’m 52 and I have a great leadership team. The business, right now, is running really, really well. We’re happy with where we are in our tech stack, in our customer base. As far as diversification, we continue to grow our e-commerce environment and our product portfolio. So, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, which is nearshore, high-speed manufacturing of badging, labels and emblems and we’ll continue to compete with China, Vietnam and those countries that are cheaper but take longer.