My Dream Job is Creating Tools to Help Make Your Business More Successful

Welcome to the Cadworxlive® blog. It's only taken 8 years for me to put a blog on this site, but you know what they say, better late than never. I'm hoping you'll forgive my tardiness, I've been pretty busy in my job as Director of Software Development for GroupeSTAHL®. I've worked for the company for nearly 16 years, and let me tell you, the time has FLOWN by. When I started, my oldest daughter was 8 months old, now her face is constantly buried in a cell phone and she's driving herself to work... although, hopefully not at the same time! My early years with the company were spent building web sites, managing network resources and performing all manner of tech related functions. My 'department' was a one-man operation in those days, but I took pride in knowing I helped usher many of the Stahls' business units into the digital age.

About 8 years ago, Ted Stahl came to me with an ambitious idea. He wanted to develop a graphic design program from the ground up. At the time, Stahls' was selling CorelDRAW® companion software. Some of you may remember DrawMATE® and (later) DirectDRIVE®. These programs were developed to simplify many of the art creation processes used every day in garment decoration and sign businesses. Believe it or not, I still hear from people using these programs to run their design and production processes. If it ain't broke, don't fix they say. As popular as these programs were, keeping up with the latest version of CorelDRAW®, (while also supporting all prior versions) became an increasingly time consuming and painful endeavor. Ted recognized we were chasing our tail and the time was ripe for innovation. Enter Cadworxlive®.

As I mentioned, Ted's idea was ambitious. He wanted to build a graphics engine from the ground up to rival other well established design programs, except he wanted it to be everything these advanced graphics systems were NOT. He wanted it to be COST EFFECTIVE. He wanted it to be SIMPLE. He wanted it to automate complicated processes, such as formatting an entire team roster, or creating two-color, split-front, script with tail designs. He wanted the largest effects library in the industry, and he wanted to GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE. Over the years Ted has taken flack for spending a truckload of money on software, only to give it away. Some say he's generous. Some say he's off his rocker! Generous? Without question. Off his rocker? Absolutely not. You see, Ted understands that people face all kinds of adversity when starting a new business. He understands that success or failure can be determined by decisions made at the outset of the journey. He understands that cost and complexity are barriers to success. He also understands that OUR success depends on YOUR success. Ted's goal with Cadworxlive is to eliminate these barriers and give you the best opportunity to succeed.

Cadworxlive launched in January 2007 to accolades and much fanfare at the Long Beach ISS show. I have vague recollections of that show, due to the weeks of all-nighters and marathon development sessions leading up to the show. Anyone who has ever launched a new product at a trade show knows what I'm talking about.

Cadworxlive Launch Party 2007 - Long Beach, CA.

Since it's inception Cadworxlive has seen a number of improvements. It has evolved from a CAD-CUT only system, to include features for print & cut, direct to garment printing, full color digital printing and screen printing. Over the years, the technology has been constantly improved and adopted by a number of GroupeSTAHL business units. Stahls' uses Cadworxlive technology in many of their internal production processes including: Player Names, Team Perfect, Any Word Any Way and Cadprintz Quick Decal. You'll find Cadworxlive technology on the Stahls' web site powering many of their real-time custom product visualizations. You'll find Cadworxlive technology on the Transfer Express web site in their brand new Easy View Designer. The technology is also used by Stahls' DFC to power a number of client web site's including steelers.com and buccaneers.com and is the engine that drives their new cutting edge, touch screen jersey station. As you can see, the Cadworxlive development team has been pretty busy.

Today Cadworxlive.com boasts more than 21,000 members in over 110 countries. My department has grown from 1 person to 12 talented individuals who find absolute joy in finding ways to make your job easier. Stay tuned, as 2014 will prove to be a banner year for Cadworxlive technology. We're about to launch a brand new web site and a series of new designers built on the fastest, most powerful graphics engine we've ever created. We're also about to release a new version of VectorCut with an improved cut path algorithm which will improve cut speeds by up to 30%. There will be improvements to our vectorize tool and a few exciting surprises I'm not at liberty to discuss at the moment.

Developing tools to help make your business more successful is truly my dream job. I couldn't imagine spending my days doing anything else. Keep working hard and shoot for the stars, because your success is our success.

Sorry for the long post; I guess after 8 years of silence I had a lot of catching up to do. :)

Thank you for your continued patronage and support.
Greg Peirce
CAD-CUT Creator