Started as competitors. Ended up family.

Dalton Taylor started Artisan Shutter in Monroe, NC in 1993 — Dalton, his wife Patti, and his brother Jeff, building plantation shutters one window at a time. The Carolina shutter trade is a small world: a lot of these folks, Jeff included, came up through the same American Shutters shop in Mint Hill, NC. Chad came into the trade in 1997 and went on to run his own Charlotte shutter shop, CP Shutterworks — bootstrapped the way these things actually get built: home shows a couple times a year, flyers stuffed in mailboxes, doing work for production builders around Charlotte.

Chad and Dalton started out as competitors. Dalton kept turning up at Chad's shop — usually with ice cream — trying to talk him into joining forces. Chad always said Dalton was the only person in this business in Charlotte he'd ever go to work for. When the 2008 recession hit — Chad had closed on a bigger building three days after the word "recession" first hit the TV news — that's exactly what happened. He joined A Shade Above in January 2010, driving the little A Shade Above–wrapped Scion around town, working out of the first retail shop on Camden Road in South End. He was one of the original crew there.

Those Charlotte years weren't just houses. Chad built the builder side of the business himself — long-running relationships with Saussy Burbank, John Wieland, Pulte Homes, and Kelly McArdle Construction — and he was hands-on in a lot of A Shade Above's bigger commercial work across the Carolinas: Novant Health in downtown Charlotte, Indian Land High School, even Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket factory down in Florida. He doesn't lead with any of that. You'd have to ask.

Around 2017, Chad's parents were getting older and he told Dalton he was probably going to have to step away to take care of them. Dalton didn't blink. "Don't do that," he said —

"Move to the beach. Let's open a showroom and you run it."— Dalton Taylor, to Chad

So that's what we did. We reshaped the whole business around one family's needs — which, if you ask us, is the only thing "family business" has ever actually meant.

Chad moved down in 2017 and ran the whole coast for a year before there was even a store — Georgetown up to Wilmington, chasing commercial bids and referrals while the retail side found its feet. The showroom opened in July 2018, in the Boulineau's building at the north end of Cherry Grove, right by Platt's. Plenty of folks told him to set up in Murrells Inlet; he went north instead — and was the only shop around open on Saturdays. For the first six years there wasn't a single pay-per-click ad: just word of mouth, yard signs, good work, and that little red roof on the main drag everybody got used to seeing.

Carter grew up in it — he came to the beach in the 6th grade, went through North Myrtle Beach schools, and at 21 he's on the install crew now with Matt. The shutters still come out of the Monroe, NC factory — same kiln-dried basswood, same triple-coated finish, same craftspeople.

By 2026 we'd had an eye on going north for a while. Brunswick County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, so much of our work was already taking us there, and it started to feel silly to keep driving past the same customers on our way home. We found a wonderful spot right at the entrance to Ocean Isle Beach — Ocean Plaza at the mainland base of the bridge, opposite end from Causeway Gourmet (the yellow building with the sweet treats) — and decided to bring the showroom to the folks who were already in the process of building homes up there. Our second showroom is now open in Ocean Isle.

What "family owned" actually means here

We are family-owned — really owned, by the Taylor family, the same people who've built the shutters in Monroe, NC since 1993 (Dalton, and now his son Casey). Chad isn't a Taylor by blood. But he and Dalton started out as competitors, became partners, and somewhere along the way became family — the kind of brothers who'll restructure a whole company so one of them can go take care of his parents.

So when we say "family-owned," we don't mean everyone behind the counter shares a last name.

The people who own this thing treat each other — and you — like family.

Chad, Jennifer or Karl measures, our Monroe, NC factory builds the shutters, and Matt and Carter install them — and you get the same folks when you call back five years later. Built for the beach. Made to last as long as the house does.