Celebritees

Celebritees was founded by Pam Karacostas in 1987. She was a reading teacher at a public school in a lower-income area of Atlanta. Her principal sent her to a screen printing class so she could learn to print shirts as an added incentive for the children to complete assignments and meet their reading goals. In doing so, she quickly learned that this was a good side business and started printing shirts for clubs and her church. She had her children, Dale, a high schooler, and Meg, a 5th grader, help her churn out the small orders that quickly started piling up. They originally began by printing orders on an ironing board and hanging the shirts up from the ceiling tiles in the basement. After about a year of doing so, she saved enough to purchase a four-head manual press and a small dryer. In 1992, her husband was transferred back to their hometown of Savannah, and she decided she would retire from teaching and see if she could turn her new venture into a profitable business. In 1997, the business had grown so that she could no longer run the company out of her home. She leased a building in Thunderbolt and bought her first automatic press. In 2001, Dale, her husband, joined the team. Formerly the sales manager for the WSAV, he was a natural choice when it came time for Celebritees to hire a sales representative. In 2004, Celebritees moved to its current location on the corner of Park and Atlantic Ave. In 2005, Meg moved home from Lexington after graduating from the University of Kentucky. Her background and degree in Equine Science and Management made Meg a likely candidate to manage the employees and wholesale customers. When Covid-19 hit in 2019, Pam and Dale retired to maintain good health. Meg took over the business with the assistance of her amazing partner in crime, Chris Ramsey. Celebritees now runs four automatic presses, two manual presses, and employs twenty-five awesome individuals who help make it a wonderful place to work every day.