Former self-described "hippy musicians" Billy Pilgrim and Lee Eldridge have turned a home-grown business into two highly successful ones 

Lee Eldridge, left, and Billy Pilgrim, right, in their office at Pilgrim Page and Absorbent, Ink., 1310 Wakarusa Dr., Suite A. Out the window is the lush green foliage of the McGrew Nature Preserve.

Lee Eldridge and Billy Pilgrim are about as close as two longtime friends can be…after all, how many people work in the same office with their best friend every day? The guys met in the 1980s in the Lawrence music scene and have since parlayed their friendship into two successful local businesses that support several families.

“We played professionally all growing up,” says Eldridge. “I put myself through college playing and touring. I met Billy while we were both touring and we joined a band called Broken English. Then we were in a band called Penguins for awhile. We did that through 1994. Billy then went on to tour with the L.A. Ramblers for another couple of years.

“Billy is a piano player and very gifted. He just has that blues rock thing down. I’m not nearly as talented. I played bass, guitar, I also sang and I play a little bit of everything. Kind of a jack of all trades, which is what I am for the business at times.”

Realizing that they weren’t going to make much of a living just doing the music thing, Pilgrim started a graphics company—Pilgrim Page—in a little one-room studio apartment in North Lawrence. At first, Pilgrim Page mostly specialized in doing advertising work for the music industry—posters and promotionals for the local music scene. “In the beginning, we did a lot of work for other bands,” says Eldridge. “We were used to being full-time musicians and used to not making much money, so we didn’t charge very much for those services at first.”

Billy Pilgrim and Lee Eldridge back in the day. This band was called the Broken Penguins, a fusion of the local bands Broken English and the Penguins. From left to right: Craig Anderson, Billy Pilgrim, Chip Nietfeld, Lee Eldridge and Mike Roberts.

But Eldridge, armed with a business degree, had faith that they could expand and provide services for all kinds of businesses. “I told Billy: You’re a wonderful artist, but you need to let me run your business for you. We sat in a park in North Lawrence with a six-pack and talked about what we wanted to do. The business moved from his house in North Lawrence to downtown and we started going after clients.”

Pilgrim and Eldridge moved Pilgrim Page to 729 ½ Massachusetts St., above Francis Sporting Goods, which, says Eldridge, “Is a beautiful old building. Carol Francis has won several awards for her historical treatment of that building.”

Pilgrim Page started in one office in the upstairs space, designing graphics, advertisements and logos for local companies. As other tenants moved out, they snatched up every office they could. During this time, Eldridge and Pilgrim were publishing a music magazine called The Note, which, at its height, was distributing 50,000 copies throughout Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. In the mid-1990s, they sold The Note to the Pitch.

After 12-and-a-half years downtown, Pilgrim Page outgrew its offices downtown and moved out west. In 2000, Pilgrim and Eldridge launched another company, Absorbent, Ink.

“You tell people you’ve moved out west and they expect nothing but generic concrete buildings,” laughs Eldridge. “But we’ve got this nature preserve behind us (the McGrew Nature Preserve) that’s just beautiful.”

Absorbent, Ink. is a promotional products company that can put a business’s logo—or your name, if you want—on just about any product you can think of, from coffee mugs to golf bags. Their website is extremely interactive and most products can be ordered directly online.

“We currently have 5,000 products on our website but we literally have access to about a million products that we can sell,” says Eldridge.

Being “old hippies,” Eldridge says that Absorbent, Ink. tries to find U.S. suppliers for the products they customize whenever they can. And, says Eldridge, he’s happy to report that more and more of the industry is turning to using recycled materials and using fair trade practices to provide their products.

Still, he says, some things simply can’t be purchased in the U.S. Those silicone “awareness bracelets” that are so popular, for instance? Eldridge says that he doesn’t know of a single U.S. company that makes them.

In the last 3-and-a-half years, Abosorbent, Ink. has grown into a national leader for businesses of its ilk—outgrowing 80 percent of its competitors—and the company, which started with five employees, now employs around 40 people.

“It’s a great feeling,” says Eldridge. “We had a staff meeting at the beginning of year and literally one of the things we talked about is how would we feel if we were someday feeding 50 or 60 families in Lawrence. It’s not just about what we’re doing for each other, but what we’re doing for the community, too. Billy and I are just not financially driven people. That’s not why we go into this. But that daily experience of wanting to grow and succeed—we’re both very driven in that regard. Success can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and some have a direct coloration between success and money. That’s not us at all.”

Though Absorbent, Ink. has built a reputation for providing promotional products to clients the world-over, Pilgrim and Eldridge hope the next step is to provide more services to businesses that are close to home. “Our approach with Absorbent, Ink. was that if we could start out selling online, we could then find a local clientele. We’re excited to take our company significantly larger locally, in Lawrence and Kansas City.”