“Sure. We’re creative, innovative, and all those things. But if I had to sum up 1220 in one word it would be love.”

Jerry Carden, along with business partner John Cherry, co-founded 1220 in 1972 after recognizing the need for fabrication of exhibit quality elements. Forty-two years later Jerry’s son, Matt, is keeping his father’s vision alive and thriving. 1220 prides itself on its close-knit employees and I truly believe the quality of service is a result of that. When a person is first hired here, they are given a list of people to meet with not only to learn how their job fits in with the company, but to start a relationship with people they will be working with every day. Results have shown this alleviates new job stress and our new hires learn to adapt and thrive quicker in their positions. Every person working here has an open door policy, whether it is to talk about business or life in general. Often times, when in a meeting a personal story will pop into my head that I share with my staff and we like to spend time talking about funny things that happened over the weekend or who lost to who in college football. We like to keep things fun around here with quarterly lunches for employees to relax and catch-up with people they don’t normally see every day. I always look forward to these because the day-to-day can get pretty monotonous, if I’m being honest. On birthdays we like to take that person out to lunch to celebrate and recently celebrated Halloween with a party and Chili cook-off (I was robbed last year). On occasion I will ride my motorcycle with a few of the guys or call in some people to share a funny YouTube video. We work hard to maintain our family atmosphere and take great pride in it. When I first came to 1220, one of the first things I noticed was how fast someone was willing to lend a hand and that is what has kept me here all these years. 1220 found me.