Terri Larson chuckles as she recalls the moment 15 years ago when she decided she had to push forward with a business idea that had been simmering in her mind for a few years. While at a hockey tournament for her son, a teammate’s mom handed her and the other moms homemade pins made of Popsicle sticks, bearing each boy’s jersey number and a “Go Wayzata” slogan. “I just knew I could come up with something beautiful that the moms would want to wear,” Larson recalls.
Larson, a former interior designer, had been creating pins by hand for the prior three years for her fellow dance moms to wear at recitals, but now she wanted to take her business concept to a whole new level. “I wanted to design a pin that would tell the story of each child and that would grow with him or her through the years,” she says.
What she came up with allows moms to attach multiple charms to a base pin made with Swarovski stones that bears the name, school logo, jersey number or even something more generic, such as “Sports Mom.”
“It didn’t happen overnight,” says Larson, who spent weeks searching the Internet for sources for her supplies and finalizing her business concept.
Fifteen years later, Larson’s business, DCS Image (short for Dance, Cheer & Sport) is booming. Her pins can be seen in high schools, colleges and universities throughout the state and across the country. She even creates pins for the NFL and NBA moms’ organizations, as well as for the Vikings cheerleaders. Businesses sometimes use DCS Image pins as incentive gifts. Most of her charms are sold wholesale and by special order as fundraisers, but some custom-made Wayzata pins and charms can be purchased at Willows in Medina.
