Greg Givens still remembers his father setting up a drill press in the family garage to save about 10 cents on every marble trophy base.
- Nearly five decades later, the business his parents bought in 1978 is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Givens and his wife, Pat, now run The Trophy Center with laser engravers and a full-color UV printer, a long way from the hand-operated machines and brass type the shop once relied on.
The Trophy Center, located at 529 Eglin Parkway NE, will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10. The owners will also be making a donation to the Air Force Armament Museum and offer guided tours of their production area, featuring their newest piece of equipment, a UV printer.
“Our business is really about making people happy,” Greg said.
A family business from the start
The Trophy Center started in 1976. His father, an Air Force pilot, moved the family to the area in 1977 when he was stationed at Hurlburt Field. Greg briefly attended Choctawhatchee High School before his parents bought a house zoned for Fort Walton Beach High School.
With his father nearing retirement from the Air Force, his parents looked at several businesses, including a self-serve laundromat, before buying The Trophy Center in 1978.
Because his father was still on active duty, he did not want a conflict of interest from owning a business that sold to the military, Greg said. So his mother became the owner, which Greg said made her one of the first fully woman-owned businesses in Fort Walton Beach at the time.
His father died of cancer a few years later, and his mother ran the business for decades afterward. Greg said she was also one of the people who bought a computerized engraver when the machines first came out.
Before that, engraving was done on pantograph machines. Workers laid out individual brass letters, traced them with a stylus and pressed a diamond tip into the plate. The shop kept a row of six machines, and plates were moved from one to the next to engrave each line. One pantograph still sits in the corner of the shop today.
In those days, the business sold trophies, some plaques, class rings, graduation supplies, chenille letters and tassels, tying it closely to the school community. The trophy bases were white Italian Carrara marble, and pre-drilled bases cost more, Greg said.
“I just remember him out in the garage … drilling marble,” he said of his father.
Years later, when the shop could not buy pre-drilled marble, Greg did the drilling himself, working over a tub of water to keep down the dust and keep the bit from cracking the stone.
“I just remember working for hours just drilling piece after piece,” he said.
Coming home
Greg earned a degree in computer science in Akron, Ohio, and worked as a programmer. He had worked at the shop during a summer or two while his parents owned it, and he said he liked it.
He and Pat met at a Halloween party in Ohio, married and started a family. After his father’s death, his mother wanted her family close, and no one else in the family was positioned to take over the business.
The couple saw a chance to set their own hours and homeschool their children. They were also concerned about problems in Ohio schools at the time and drawn to the beach and the military community, Greg said.
- “The military really impacts this community a lot,” he said. “So I wanted to do it, and we’ve talked about it, and Patty said, ‘If that’s what you want to do, then let’s do it.'”
The family moved in 1991 with four children. Pat was seven months pregnant with their fifth, who was born in Fort Walton Beach.
The move meant a pay cut, but because Ohio residents paid state, county and city taxes, the family actually took home more money in Florida, Greg said.
“I was making less money, but I was taking home more money,” he said.
Because of the career change, the couple did not expect to qualify for a home loan for several years. Greg used most of the roughly $10,000 in his 401(k) to take over an assumable mortgage on a house in Mary Esther, where the family lived for six or seven years.
“God was watching over us,” he said.
At the shop, the longtime employee who had run the pantographs was struggling with the switch to computerized engraving. Greg taught himself the new machine.
“For me it was no big deal,” he said. “I was not afraid of computers.”
The shop still keeps an old computer running because it is the only system that will operate one of its rotary engravers.
Greg worked at the business from 1991 until 2003, when his mother was ready to retire and he and Pat offered to buy it.
“She said, ‘Yep, great,'” Greg said.
Pat remains the majority owner, keeping The Trophy Center a woman-owned business.
Keeping up with the times
Since taking over 23 years ago, the couple has added laser engravers, which Greg said are now on their fourth and fifth machines, along with sublimation printing and a new UV printer bought last year. The UV printer allows full-color printing on many products that could not be marked before, such as a leatherette poker set box.
“There’s a lot of things we can do now with the new UV printer,” Greg said.
The products have changed along with the machines. Metal trophy figures and aluminum columns gave way to plastic. Lasers can engrave acrylic and glass, and a rotary attachment lets the shop engrave drinking glasses.
What customers are requesting has shifted, too. When Greg arrived in 1991, the military ordered large numbers of lasered walnut plaques. Today, he said, military customers prefer eagle awards or crystal and acrylic pieces. Many customers also want functional gifts, like a box printed with a retirement message that opens to a flask and shot glasses.
Greg said the business follows industry trends through a national organization of recognition specialists, which publishes a monthly magazine, while also watching what customers ask for locally.
Brick-and-mortar staying power
As online shopping has grown, The Trophy Center still sees customers who ordered awards online only to find the plates engraved wrong or the order not arriving in time. On the day of the interview, Greg said, a woman called because her online order would not arrive before her group’s sports awards event.
“I told her, ‘If you get in here, I’ll get them done for you,'” he said.
Pat said shopping in person lets customers see the quality of what they are buying.
“When you come into a store like ours, you can lift the objects and feel the weight behind it,” she said.
Greg said the business grows mostly through word of mouth. He described a customer that day who was sent by Maddox Jewelers.
- “He said, ‘You need to go see Greg at the Trophy Center. He’ll take care of you,'” Greg said.
For the Givens Family, the shop treats every customer the same, whether they are buying a $10 plate or spending thousands of dollars.
“We’re human, so when we do make a mistake, we fix it, and they know that,” he said. “When they come back to you and they continually keep coming back to you, you know you’re doing right by them.”
The business has weathered its share of hard times, including the market crash, COVID-19, the BP oil spill and hurricanes. Greg said the shop bounced back from COVID-19 much faster than from the oil spill. After one hurricane, he ran an engraver off a generator behind the building so he could finish a large order.
“I knew it was a big order, and I had to get it done,” he said.
Giving back
Giving back has been part of the business since his mother’s time, Greg said. She worked with the Greater Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce and the American Cancer Society and served on boards. Greg is a past president of the Emerald Coast Exchange Club.
Pat said the business tracks its donations through its accounting system. By their count, The Trophy Center gave $67,000 to the community last year and $583,000 over the past 10 years. They estimate the total over 50 years at about $2.5 million.
Those donations range from team sponsorships and program ads to awards, including a trophy donated for the Fort Walton Beach-Choctaw Battle of the Bands.
“I think it’s a good thing to give back to the community that supported you,” Greg said. “In all honesty, we wouldn’t be here if the people that are part of this community weren’t coming in and supporting us.”
- “Your community doesn’t function if people aren’t working within it,” he added.
The anniversary donation to the Air Force Armament Museum will include cast medallions the shop no longer uses. Pat said the medallions were once the only way to add color to a plaque, and the museum can sell them in its gift shop.
‘God’s blessed us’
Over the years, the shop has engraved an award that a group from the base presented to former President George W. Bush and has shipped awards to places such as England.
The business also helped the couple raise five children, send them through college and watch their family grow to 10 grandchildren. Their daughter-in-law now works at the shop. Greg, 65, and Pat, 64, have also started closing the Friday before national holidays, as the military does, to spend more time with family.
Greg credits his faith for the business’ 50 years.
“I am a Christian, so God has really done a lot of this,” he said. “The blessings that we have had, which I am very appreciative of, I understand they come from God. Now he’s brought them through the people that have come in the door.”
He said success was never about getting rich.
“I was trying to raise a family and enjoy some of the things that I like to enjoy, and God’s blessed us to be able to do that,” Greg said. “The community has supported us, and without that we wouldn’t have been here for 50 years. So I’m thankful.”
