DS LASER ENGRAVING: A SISKIYOU COUNTY GEM

Are you considering an exceptional engraved gift for a special someone? Do you need a thousand custom engraved items for a big event? Are you concerned about quality, durability and sustainable materials? Do you want to work with a real person (not a chat bot) to get your custom design just right? Dustin and Sarah Steger have crafted a unique business, DS Laser Engraving in Mount Shasta, which can deliver all that and much more.

Growing a Business from a Simple Idea

Dustin and Sarah’s business adventure started over eight years ago when Dustin was making a job transition and got to thinking about what he wanted to do next. “I loved the concept of 3D printing,” he says, “and I started researching it online.”

“He ended up getting a 3D printer and added a laser diode that can engrave very thin pieces of wood,” says Sarah. “So he started making wood stickers.”

A friend invited Sarah and Dustin to share her booth at a local fair and the stickers sold like hot cakes. “It just took off from there,” says Sarah.

Dustin and Sarah worked out of their home, expanding their product line and vending at fairs until COVID forced them off the fair circuit and encouraged them to beef up their website and increase their online presence. They continued to grow and in 2023 opened their beautiful retail space at 210 High Street in Mount Shasta, moving their production facilities from their home to a spacious shop at the back of the store. They now work with customers throughout the U.S. to create custom engraved products in a wide variety of materials including glass, acrylic, wood, slate, ceramic, stainless steel, copper, gold, silver and even fabric.

Crafting a Gem of a Local Business

“The key to our success,” Sarah says, “is what I call ‘bulk customization.’ We’ll do custom designs for anything from a one-off Valentine’s Day gift to an order of two thousand items.” From etching a wedding photo onto stone, wood, acrylic or metal, to printing full color designs on just about any hard material or apparel, they are continually increasing their products and services. They can even do vehicle decals; both adhesive and magnetic. But what makes DS Laser Engraving a regional gem is the personal attention and design help they provide customers who come to the store. “We’d like local customers to know that, although you can order laser cut items from other companies online,” Sarah says, “a unique service that we offer is to work with a customer one-on-one in our shop to make sure they get exactly what they want.”

And when you work with Sarah and Dustin in person, you can make sure you are getting a quality product. “How many times have you ordered something online and when you received it you saw the quality and said, ‘Now I know why it was only $9.99,’” says Sarah.

Sustainable Products are the Name of the Game

Local businesses like Mount Shasta Pharmacy, Lauer Electric, Ramshaw’s, Mount Shasta Avalanche Center and Mountain Medics trust Sarah and Dustin to provide high quality, professionally engraved custom products, from engraved name tags to industrial electrical tags to event swag.

But what local customers really appreciate is that DS Laser Engraving uses renewable materials whenever possible, choosing wood, metal or granite over plastic or acrylic materials. “We want to create custom high quality lasting pieces that people can cherish and have for a long time,” Dustin says. “And every purchase plants a tree,” Sarah adds. “We donate a percentage of our annual income to the National Forest Service to plant trees.” And best of all, purchase dollars stay local!

It takes hard work and dedication to consistently provide excellent products and customer service. But Dustin and Sarah’s love of their work and their joy in meeting and exceeding customer expectation is evident in all they say and to. “I am so blessed,” says Dustin. “I love the variety of projects I get to work on every day.”

In a world in which personal customer service is becoming scarce, big box store employee turnover often leads to sales associates with little experience or knowledge of products, and ordering online often means no customer service at all and purchasing a “pig-in-a-poke” (as my mother used to say), local businesses like DS Laser that provide excellent products and customer service, whether customers purchase from their online store or come into their shop, are true treasures and in demand more than ever.

Stop in their store, open Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm at 210 High Street, Suite D in MountShasta, find them online at dslaserengraving.com or call (530)710-1843. They have items in the store that are already engraved, blanks you can have custom engraved and you can bring in items of your own to have engraved.