History
To view vintage catalogs and brochures dating back to 1957 please click here.
- 1867
- Albin Wunderlich is born on a farm in a village in the state of Saxony, Germany.
- 1892
- Albin starts his embroidery business in the small town of Oelsnitz.
- 1908
- Albin’s daughter Elsa married Kurt Erwin Conrad
- 1909
- Kurt Erwin opens his embroidery business in Oelsnitz the same day his son, Erich Henry Conrad, is born.
- 1914
- Kurt shutters his business and goes to war, serving in France, Turkey, and on the Russian Front — where he is taken prisoner in 1916.
- 1918
- During the Bolshevik Revolution, Kurt Erwin is freed along with other POW’s inside Russia and left to find his own way home.
- 1919
- Kurt Erwin has his business up and running the very next year.
- 1920’s
- Post war chaos, hyper-inflation, and anarchy lead to the near collapse of German civil society. Adding to the misery, flappers are in and embroidery is out of fashion.
- 1929
- The stock market crashes.
- 1929
- Seeing no future in Germany, Erich Henry sails to the United States on USS Roosevelt, arriving in Hoboken, New Jersey with $4.68 on Christmas Eve.
- 1932
- Erich Henry returns to Germany and marries his sweetheart, Anni Ilse Schnauder.
- 1933
- Anni, together with her infant daughter, Annerose, immigrate to the U.S.
- 1940
- Erich Henry’s second child, Bernhard is born.
- 1941
- Erich Henry starts Conrad Embroidery Company in West New York, New Jersey.
- 1951
- Following the tragic and unexpected death of Anni, Erich Henry is advised to incorporate a second company. Given the stress and unexpected circumstances, he simply names the new company A-B. “A” for Annerose and “B” for Bernhard.
- 1961
- Bernhard apprentices for better part of one year at one of the largest Brazilian manufacturers of traditional embroidery.
- 1962
- A-B Emblem produces the original NASA logo.
- 1963
- In the spring ground is broken for a new and expanded factory in Weaverville, North Carolina. By mid-November the factory is up and running and Erich Henry, along with his second wife, Johanna, and Bernhard have relocated.
- 1980’s
- Low cost low quality imports begin to flood the market. A-B Emblem pushes hard and invests heavily to keep the business in the United States of America.
- 1991
- Paul Conrad, Bernhard’s son and Andrew Nagle, his son-in-law, join A-B Emblem.
- 1992
- Erich Henry dies unexpectedly.
- 1995
- A-B’s first foreign enterprise, Embemas Bordados de Mexico, SA de CV, Tecali de Herrera, Puebla, south of Mexico City, starts operations.
- 2005
- A-B’s second foreign enterprise, Qingdao Emblem Manufacturing, commences operations in Laixi, Shandong Province, China.