Melyssa and Ben Borgic have been building things together since high school. They were sweethearts at Newton Community High School — Ben graduated in 2002, Melyssa in 2003 — and they've been side by side for most of the two-plus decades since.

When Melyssa was 18, she was in a jet ski accident. It shook them. "Made us realize life's too short. Let's get married." They did, in 2005.

By the time they had three children — Mackenzie (Kenzie), Camden, and Jaxon — Ben had already started and run a custom manure application business, the kind of highly specialized fertilizer work most farm operations prefer to outsource. The business grew fast. The last year he ran it, he spent more than 100 nights in a hotel. He had a wife and three young children at home.

He sold out of it — passing his share to his brother — and the family spent a couple of years regrouping.

Meanwhile, Melyssa went back to school. She enrolled at Eastern Illinois University while the kids were small, writing papers with a toddler on her lap. "I had set a goal, and my goal was to graduate college whether I used it or not. I know that sounds crazy." She graduated with a degree in organizational and professional development — nearly a 4.0, derailed only by one class she still blames on the professor. She got her degree. The goal was met.

The business that exists today started with a thread from earlier in her life. Before any of this, Melyssa had worked in Olney doing embroidery for a local shop and selling horse supplies. That background never fully left her. When she and Ben were serving on the Chamber board and discovered the local school district was spending a significant amount out of town every year on screen printing, embroidery, and promotional products, the idea crystallized. They could do that. They could bring that revenue home.

In 2019, they started in the garage. A screen-printing press, an embroidery machine, and two people willing to figure it out. "I just put my head down and just worked," is how Ben describes his half of the partnership. Melyssa handled the operational and customer side. Three years later the garage had long since overflowed, and they bought a building on the Newton square — the former Chamber of Commerce building, as it turned out. The Chamber now rents space from them on one side of the showroom.

Today the business runs screen printing, embroidery, vinyl graphics, signs, banners, laser engraving, and specialty products. The Borgics strive to be a one stop shop for their customers. They produce horse blankets for most of the region's county fairs and for both the Illinois State Fair and the Du Quoin State Fair. They've done work for the Mid-America Corvette Fun Fest and the Volkswagen Fun Fest in Effingham. They ship orders all over the US, from Spartanburg, SC to Las Vegas, NV.

Their kids help at the shop. Kenzie, a senior, started working there at 15. Camden is about to enter high school. Jaxon is heading into eighth grade. "I want to say it's cheap labor, but they're really not," Ben says of the family workforce.

They'll tell you plainly that it isn't always easy. "Running a small business is hard. And even with community support, trying to do it in a town this size is even harder." The current economy hasn't been gentle. "This year's been kind of a struggle for us. We're doing it, but with the price of everything, nobody's spending money." They say both things and then get back to work.

What holds it together, they say, is straightforward. "We put our faith first and the rest of it just falls in place after that." They're active in their church, involved in community leadership, and rooted in a county they chose and continue to choose. When the kids were asked about the possibility of moving, the answer was always some version of: not until I graduate.

Every morning they drive to the square together. Every evening they go home. "We are together 24 hours a day and literally would not do it any other way."