Founder and president of Goshen Engineering Jason Stevens stands in his firm’s entryway with his wife, Ashley, whose business, Ashley Nichole Designs, is located next door.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Ashley Nichole Designs specializes in customizable wreaths, door hangers, vinyl flags and mailbox covers, and seasonal decor.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Veronica Hernandez, Ashley Stevens’s first employee, started with her in 2013 when she was still working out of her garage.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Rosa Ambriz, left, and Laura Ornelas each apply a base coat of paint to wooden door hangers at Ashley Nichole Designs. This is very different from the work being done next door at Goshen Engineering…(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
At Goshen Engineering, industrial installation technician Ricardo Mejia is building a 4000-amp switchboard.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
A behind-the-scenes peek at Ashley Nichole Designs reveals a wall of silk flowers.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
A behind-the-scenes peek at Goshen Engineering shows solar skids and electrical switchboards.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
A custom wreath takes shape thanks to the talent and skill of Ashley Nichole Designs’ Cory Anderson.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
On the wall behind wreath designer Jennifer Spivey, left, and Ashley Stevens, are numerous samples to be used for reference during the wreath-making process.(Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Headed east on Highway 55 out of Mount Olive, just when you think you’re “in the country,” look to your left and you’ll see two businesses sitting side by side: Ashley Nichole Designs and Goshen Engineering. One provides customizable home décor items; the other provides highly technical engineering solutions. On the face of it, there’s no connection, but then you find out that Ashley Stevens owns Ashley Nichole Designs, and her husband of 20 years, Jason, is the founder and president of Goshen Engineering.
Ashley and Jason are Mount Olive natives who live in Faison with their children, Garrett, 12, and Caroline, 10. Individually, but with each other’s support, they’ve built successful businesses that allow them to pursue their passions, while remaining close to their extended families and providing good job opportunities in their home community. It’s a win for everyone. Here’s a look at the unique path Ashley and Jason each took to get to where they are now.
Ashley started her business in 2010, as a hobby — a creative outlet — while working as a nurse at Wayne Memorial Hospital. As is the case with many hobbyists, her kitchen table doubled as her workspace. One of her first official steps toward turning her hobby into a business came in the spring of 2011, when she and her sister made wreaths and sold them at the Pickle Festival. “Over the next couple of years, I just dabbled in making things,” she recalls. It was during this time that she was laying the groundwork for the various items her company specializes in today: wreaths, door hangers (decorative, wooden cut-outs), vinyl flags and mailbox covers, and seasonal décor.
Each time Ashley finished a wreath or door hanger, she’d post it on Facebook, and her posts didn’t just generate “likes”; they generated business. “It just grew and grew and grew,” she remembers. By the spring or summer of 2013, she decided to “take the leap and do what I really loved,” so she left nursing and devoted herself to her already budding décor business.
By the fall, she’d moved operations from the kitchen to the garage, and she’d brought her first employee onboard. Veronica Hernandez, who is still with her today, did double duty, helping with the growing business and helping with the growing kids (Garrett and Caroline were pre-school age at the time).
By January 2014, after a brief period of renting a space in Warsaw, Ashley Nichole Designs settled into its current home, which houses a large production facility (all products are handmade on-site) and a retail store. The number of employees now stands at 70.
When asked what sets her apart from other similar businesses, she answers, “Pretty much everything we offer is customizable. [Customers] can get their name on their piece; they can get the color, pattern, pretty much however they want it.”
A second key to her success is social media. Ashley has used Facebook, TikTok and Instagram to connect with customers, both new and returning. “We have lots and lots of repeat customers that have bought from us for years and years, and I think that speaks volumes,” she says.
Among her future plans, Ashley cites her hopes of expanding her showroom space to accommodate everyday shopping, as well as the larger events (open houses) she hosts every spring, fall and Christmas.
Ashley’s online presence, including her website (ashleynicholedesigns.com), showcases and makes available to customers the many products she offers.
Jason Stevens’s Goshen Engineering also has an information-packed website (goshenengineering.com), providing potential customers with details about the company and what it offers. For those seeking Goshen’s services, the website is, no doubt, very helpful. For a layperson (like this reporter), the information can be intimidating to try to digest, so Jason recently provided a more simplified explanation.
Broadly speaking, Goshen Engineering provides two different types of engineering solutions, depending on the type of environment in which the service is needed. The first is “industrial automation,” which involves taking a manual process in a manufacturing plant and turning it into a semi-automated or fully automated process. “We might design equipment that’s fully automated, we might build control panels that just control equipment that’s fully automated, or we might purchase things like robots and integrate those in with other pieces of equipment to make an automated work cell,” Jason explains.
The second type of engineering solution is “electrical integration,” involving mostly customers in the solar market. A bare-bones explanation is this: Driving down the road, we’ve all become accustomed to seeing large fields of solar panels; those panels produce DC power, which would be useless if it couldn’t be converted to the AC power that runs on our electrical grid. That’s where Goshen Engineering comes in: They engineer and build the electrical assemblies that convert DC power to AC.
Jason, a licensed Professional Engineer, founded Goshen Engineering in 2006, although the business didn’t become a full-time endeavor until 2014. Prior work experience at local companies — including Cooper Standard Automotive, IMPulse, and Reuel — prepared him for owning his own firm. “I worked in various manufacturing engineering roles and management roles,” he notes. “I got a very broad skill set working with those companies to help me to do what I’m doing here.”
He hired his first employee in 2015, and the company grew from three employees in 2017 to 21 employees currently. He anticipates more growth in the near future.
Jason’s reason for starting an engineering firm in Mount Olive was simple: “One of my motivating factors is, I wanted to do complex engineering and machine design, and that was not available in this area, and I didn’t want to move away. My family, [Ashley’s] family, all of our extended family lives here. We wanted our kids to grow up in this environment. So in order to do what I’m doing now, I kinda had to start a business doing that.”
To learn more about Goshen Engineering or Ashley Nichole Designs, visit their respective websites. The businesses are located at 439 and 429 NC Hwy 55 East, Mount Olive. Ashley Nichole Designs’ retail store is open Monday-Friday, 9-5, and Saturdays 9-1.
