Alumni Business Owner Profile

There are so many things to know and so many exciting things to learn in university, that settling on just one area of study can be challenging. In 1993, Michael Abramson’s (BSc ’02) interest lay in marketing and small business, so becoming a full time Business Administration major seemed logical, but it would be two majors later before Abramson graduated.

Though he began his business studies in earnest, within a couple of years, Abramson drifted over to Political Science and changed his major. A favourite 100-level university class taught by Dr. Shreesh Juyal, an international relations specialist and University of Regina Poli Sci professor, opened his mind. “Dr. Juyal had a very interesting way of teaching, and he explained the dimensions of political science in a way that made me see the world from a different perspective,” Abramson explains.

University can be all-encompassing and by 1995, Abramson juggled fulltime Political Science classes with his job at a local jewelry store and had become club president of UROC – the hopeful U of R student radio station that he and some fellow students were trying to get off the ground. For a while, the radio station was on track to succeed: the UROC group did some fundraising and were able to get a motion passed to collect a portion of student fees to support the station, but it ultimately ran into problems with URSU and university administration over space issues. In the end, the station folded, and UROC never made it to air.

“If it had been a few years later, it may have done well as a collective for podcasting, but that wasn’t a thing yet,” Abramson says of the student station.

As UROC took up more of this time, his studies went by the wayside and Abramson wisely decided to take a year off to work and do some thinking before embarking on his next major.

 “Oh Michael, you’re good at computers, you should do that!” his mother said to him one day. He always enjoyed working with computers and was persuaded to change majors a third time. Abramson breezed through his 100 and 200-level Computer Science (CS) classes and maintained a high average. But when his 300-level CS classes began, some challenges began to appear.

“I just seemed to be spinning my wheels by third year, and I took some time and sought out some insight,” Abramson explains. “I discovered that I had a learning disability and ironically, a Computer Science degree may have been one of the most difficult degrees for me to pursue.”

Back in the mid-1990s, students listened to Grunge, Microsoft launched Windows 95, and learning disabilities were not widely accepted like they are today. At that time, accepting and discussing one’s learning limitations surely took a certain amount of bravery. Abramson had always had difficulty with reading and writing and also processing symbols and language (imagine studying for a Computer Science degree with a learning disability like that!). Luckily for him, there were some very supportive professors in the UR Computer Science department, and he received support and accommodation for his learning challenges which helped him finish his degree.

The CS class he had most problems with was the outlier that dragged down his average but was necessary for Abramson to graduate. The professor who taught this particular class granted Mike a pass, but under one condition: Mike wouldn’t do a job that involved critical infrastructure, nor a position that lives depended on. Mike gladly kept his promise.

Recalling his time in university more than two decades later, Abramson remains proud of his degree and says that his U of R days “really helped me to think on my feet and problem-solve creatively, so each challenge I’m faced with, I can proceed with my best and most creative ideas. This usually leads to a successful outcome.”

Abramson has been working since he was a teenager (starting at McDonalds) and appreciates the value of work. While taking classes at the U of R, he worked for a number of small businesses including a trophy store called M I Keys and Things.

While working for the trophy store, Mike helped the business expand into engraving and promo goods. When the original owner decided to sell the business in 2013, Abramson saw the store’s potential and purchased it. M I Keys and Things easily transitioned to Mikey’s Awards and Promotions.

Mikey’s offers trophies and thousands of promotional products and business gifts. The artwork – engraving, laser engraving, or full colour decoration – is applied to trophies, awards, giftware, name badges, clothing, and industrial tags at the Dewdney Avenue shop.

“The things I love about my business are the people,” he says. “My employees are fantastic, and customers are fun to interact with. I love to see an art project turn into a physical product that people can hold and touch. It's great to see the look on my customer’s faces when they pick up their product, seeing their vision that has become a reality and a physical manifestation of their imagination.”

One of Mikey’s standout projects is the work they do for Sask. Lacrosse. Mikey’s has been making tournament medals for “The Creator’s Game” since 2017, working carefully with the sports organization and with Cree elders to ensure the correct translation for the wording on the medals, even finding an open-source site to source Cree language characters.

Regina is not lacking in terms of promotional products. Mikey’s is one of many promotional companies in the city, but it tries to differentiate itself from the competition with excellent customer service and genuine care for their customers and their orders, proclaiming that the only limitations for awards and promo items is one’s imagination.

In the coming years, Abramson intends to expand his business to a larger space with new equipment to increase capacity for in-house projects and decoration. Beyond that, a succession plan will be in the works and with any luck, one day Abramson will retire after a lifetime of work and study.

“I'm still learning every day. I improvise, pivot, and learn from each project as it comes,” he says twelve years on.