Chamber of Commerce aims to help veteran-owned businesses
As a lieutenant colonel, Irving Donaldson led the 369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Harlem Hellfighters, into Iraq in 2004.
His Iraq service came at the tail end of a long military career for Donaldson, who also served for a time in Kuwait. It was during his tour of duty there that he got an idea for a business he wanted to start when his military service ended and he returned to civilian life. Today, he is the proud owner of Blue Alert LLC, a Canarsie-based company that does embroidery on shirts, jackets and accessories, as well as digital printing.
How did he come up with the idea for the business? “You have to patch your name into your uniform a lot when you’re in the service. That’s how I got the idea to have an embroidery business,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle. While still in Kuwait, Donaldson helped local residents with their embroidery needs by hooking an embroidery device to a computer to make the process move faster.
Donaldson retired from the army in 2006, founded Blue Alert in 2007 and has been devoting himself to the business ever since. He believes his time in the service helps him as a business owner. “In the military, you encounter the unforeseen. It prepares you to look ahead and identify problems that are coming so that you can get to work on solving them,” he said.