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Use of AI in Consulting Sews Up New Opportunities For Norfolk Seamstress and Stitches by Kim, LLC

ogo for “Stitches by Kim LLC” featuring silver scissors in the center of a colorful, patterned circle divided into yellow, red, turquoise, and blue sections with stitch-like designs, surrounded by white rays.

Wayne – Seamstress Kim Vogt and her Norfolk business, Stitches by Kim, LLC, are discovering new opportunities for growth thanks in part to the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the consulting provided by the Nebraska Business Development Center (NBDC) office in Wayne.

Vogt says she began sewing when she was a child. “Back in the 60s when Barbie dolls came out, they had kits to sew her clothes, but we couldn’t always afford them,” she recalls. “So I took my mother’s fabric scraps and made them.”

She began working as a seamstress from her home in 2000. Her business took a step forward in 2018 when she founded Stitches by Kim, now situated in the River Point District of downtown Norfolk.

Her handiwork covers a variety of services, from repairing zippers and sewing curtains, to wedding and bridesmaid dresses. She also does her own designing, and teaches teenagers how to sew their own prom dresses.

In 2024, Vogt was shown a flyer detailing the NBDC’s services by a friend who had started a cleaning business. At the time, Vogt wanted to expand into custom-tailored shirts and ties for big and tall men, so she visited with the NBDC and Benjamin Benton, the Wayne Center Director for America’s SBDC – Nebraska, a program of the NBDC.

"He came up with such cool ideas,” Vogt says. “With his help, I think I’ve doubled my business. I get a lot more referrals now. He asked a lot of questions and recognized how much I care about quality. The way I see it, you should either do your best or not do it at all.”

Benton worked with Vogt on market research and social media marketing, business planning and branding, customer acquisition and sales tracking, succession planning, internet enrollment and internship proposal development, connecting with Wayne State College career services for student employment, registering the LLC with Nebraska Secretary of State, and obtaining her IRS Employer Identification Number (EIN) registration. He also introduced her to the NBDC’s APEX Accelerator program for government contracting opportunities.

Working with Vogt was one of the first times Benton employed AI into the consulting process.

“AI wasn’t just an add-on in this project; it became a driving force behind the results,” Benton says. “By using AI for market research, I was quickly able to uncover trends and opportunities in the tailoring industry that might have taken weeks to identify otherwise. Those insights guided the business plan and shaped a more focused marketing strategy, saving time while giving the client a clearer path forward.”

He says AI’s impact was very real. “It streamlined our work, uncovered new opportunities, and supported innovation in ways that made a big difference,” he says. “It also showed Kim and I the bigger picture – that AI can help level the playing field, giving small businesses access to the kind of data-driven insights usually reserved for larger companies.”

Benton plans to continue incorporating AI into his consulting work. “Because of this success,” he says, “I see AI not as a one-time experiment, but as a tool that is utilized with every client at the first consulting session to strengthen the support that the SBDC Center at Wayne State College provides entrepreneurs throughout a 29-county region.”

This year, Vogt’s entrepreneurial spirit led to Kim’s Corner – her creative hub for new ideas and community connections to grow her business.

“I would like to get to the point that I hire two or three people who like to sew,” she says. “I want to be the sewing center in Norfolk; the one people chose to go to. It takes hard work and a desire to keep improving yourself, and that’s me in a nutshell.”