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About Busy Beaver Button Co.
The Busy Beaver Button Company came to be when its founder, Christen Carter, spent a semester abroad in England in 1995. Carter saw the popularity of one-inch badges (as they’re called in the Queen’s English) in the London music scene and learned what she could of the button-making craft. With a manual press and the encouragement of her first customer, indie rock band Guided By Voices, the entrepreneurial expat returned to school in Indiana where she ran the burgeoning button business out of her college apartment. Initially known as The Li’l One-Inch Button Company, Busy Beaver found a new name and, in 1998, settled down in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood where the company now resides.
Since its humble beginnings Busy Beaver Button Company has gone from a one-woman operation to a company with fifteen employees. During its first fifteen years, the Busy Beaver crew has overseen over 50,000 designs and produced millions upon millions of buttons for clients like Missy Elliot, Bumble and Bumble, Threadless, Adidas, and Burger King.
Pinback Preservation and Pioneering
The Busy Beaver Button Company celebrated its 15th anniversary with a gift to button-lovers everywhere: the world's first button museum. Located within the company headquarters, The Busy Beaver Button Museum opened to the general public with hundreds of historical buttons on display. A veritable Art Pin-stitute of Chicago, the museum features notable buttons from the past century.
While celebrating buttons of the past with its museum, Busy Beaver has made its own contributions to the medium’s history. The company was the first to offer 24-karat gold plated buttons, pressed the first ever one-inch square pins and houses the world’s largest button vending machine.
Community of Expression
Busy Beaver prides itself on being an active member of the community, providing opportunities by supporting local non-profit Girls Rock Chicago, hosting button-making workshops at the Chicago Public Library and sponsoring a local high school robotics team. For its annual Button-O-Matic series, the company enlists the support of local artists and like-minded businesses to create limited runs of wearable art. The company is a model of eco-efficiency, from its geothermal heated headquarters to the recycled Gary steel in each button.
Further encouraging creative expression, Busy Beaver now boasts comprehensive design services to help everyone realize their pinnable potential. The company blog is a font of "pinspiration," celebrating customer creativity and even providing resources to facilitate fundraising efforts.
