Made In Chicago: Busy Beaver Button Company
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Christen Carter is the owner of the Busy Beaver Button Company.
"It's such an array of what's happening in the world," she said.
She started her company in 1995 to promote a band. She says buttons can tell you a lot about a person.
"You know, if you see somebody and it's like, 'Oh, they're wearing a Trump button. That's interesting. I didn't know I was going to run into a Trump follower today,'" she said.
Carter has a button museum.
"I really like this one," she said. "This is from - I don't know - mid-'40s: 'Kick out depression with a Democratic vote' and you actually pull this string and the donkey is kicking the elephant in the rear end there."
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Buttons are for people who wear their hearts on their lapels.
"Obviously, even if I disagree with somebody, I respect the fact that they're willing to put it out there," she said. "It's an admirable thing to engage people in ways that... and follow up with what you believe."
But Carter has a rule: No bootleg buttons - meaning no stolen logos - and no bigots. Like a white power group that wanted buttons.
"I was like, 'Wait a second' and I looked them up... and I (decided), 'I'm going to have to send you back your money,'" she said.
The Busy Beaver Button Company has about 100,000 buttons in its collection.
Carter has a staff of nine full-timers and more than a dozen part-timers.
"The other week I was thinking, 'This is the workplace I want,'" she said.
She says they can turn out 25,000 buttons a day from their storefront on the Northwest Side.
For more information, visit www.busybeaver.net.
