David Hieatt is the co-founder of Hiut Denim Company in Cardigan, Wales. He was living in London and working for Saatchi when he started to wonder about moving back to his home in Wales. So he created Howies, an action sports clothing brand, which sold to Timberland in 2006.
Hieatt was looking for his next project when he learned that the UK’s biggest jeans factory was formerly at Cardigan in Wales – exactly where he was plotting to manufacture jeans. Hundreds of people in Cardigan had put in more than 10,000 hours at sewing machines, making them highly-skilled “grandmasters” (in Malcolm Gladwell parlance) of making jeans. All of them had lost their jobs when the former denim factory closed in 2002. Hieatt dreams of employing these grandmasters and restoring Cardigan to its manufacturing glory.
What do you do?
The grandmasters are self-organising in that they run the factory. I help build the team and think abut how we tell the story to the world.
The Coda. A classic slim leg jean, button fly, mid-rise, not too skinny, not too loose, made with raw denim. https://t.co/SpDDvcC96I pic.twitter.com/p3cc07SCpD
— Hiut Denim Co (@hiutdenim) May 8, 2018
In effect there are two factories: one is making jeans and one is telling the story. It’s a content factory, and we have to be as good at telling our story as we do about making jeans.
What is the point of the project?
The big aim is to get 400 people their jobs back. The context is that it’s a very small town in west Wales, it had the UK’s biggest jeans factory and in 2002 that factory closed and 400 world-class makers had nothing to make.
Why do we do it? We want to be a town that is a maker town. We’re fighting for the right to make and to pass those skills on. We shouldn’t give up the right to make. At the moment if we’re honest it’s a town that’s busy for six weeks when the tourists come but it lost its mojo when the factory closed.
When was the moment you decided to do this?
After we sold our company [Howies] we realised we didn’t like someone else owning it. We couldn’t start another for a year. I’d written a plan about making jeans because that’s something we did well at Howies, but I was wondering if I wanted to run around the same track twice.
I had a call from Gideon Day who was a designer at Howies and he said it’s not about you it’s about the town. That bigger purpose, bigger than myself, is about building a world-class denim company.
The first years people would laugh at me, and now come June we’ll employ 25 people and the only way to 26 is through 25, so slowly we’re growing and people aren’t laughing.
“The big aim is to get 400 people their jobs back,” how @davidhieatt of @hiutdenim is reviving the decades-old tradition of jeans manufacturing in Cardigan, Wales https://t.co/83J6CIiZHr
— Far Nearer (@far_nearer) May 14, 2018
What’s been the proudest moment?
Everyone in the factory believing we can do it. To get belief in a team takes not just me saying some nice words, but us being talked about all around the world. It’s the team saying, “We can do it.” When a team becomes a team, that’s the best moment.
What’s been hardest?
The first could of years of any business are hard. No one knows you exist. You make a great product and there’s that thing of build it and they will come but they will only come if they know about you.
Starting from nothing is tough. As it should be, because it’s a test. If you pass the test, it allows you in.
What drives you when it gets hard?
Because it wasn’t about me. Those gates were closed in 2002, no one thought they were going to open again. So I was driven by the idea that this town was going to become and remain a maker town: we have the skills and we’re not going to let them go.
That should be the case for lots of towns. They have the skills and they shouldn’t let them go.
What’s the next step?
Move in and grow and managing the growth. Growth is mostly good but you have to be careful you don’t take a fall. It’s sensible growth, getting the world to understand that we are here so we can carry on going.
Some of this isn’t rocket science, like making a world class product.
Asking yourself the question, each day, how do we get better than we were yesterday.
How did you vote in the EU referendum and why?
I just want to be part of Europe, and I felt proud to be part of it, and I’m sad that we’re not going to be.
How will the outcome affect what you do?
If you ask politicians they have no clue and we have no clue either. Common sense will prevail, we’re creative. 20 per cent of our sales are from Europe or America but that’s been consistent from day one.
We haven’t really experienced any big swings. We import because there’s no one in the UK making denim. Japan makes the finest salvaged denim and that’s the original, woven on shuttle, so we get most from there.
In terms of organic, we get that from Turkey and we’re working on a lower impact denim which uses less water and electricity and that comes from Italy in a nature reserve.
A new delivery 😍#jean #madeinwales #selvedge
Watch “Hiut Factory” on #Vimeo https://t.co/c2nPw3CUdw pic.twitter.com/MRoFQWcSW1— Regent (@RegentTailoring) June 15, 2017
What would you say to someone looking to do something similar?
It can be done.
This is why I think it can: we’re living in a golden age.
The internet has changed the economics for makers. If they have a great service, it can be shared with a global audience. That’s a radical transformation.
Not everyone loves social media but it wouldn’t be possible to do what we do without the internet. The internet has changed our town. We wouldn’t be able to employ 25 people without the internet.
The old factory thought about who can be the cheapest and it wasn’t us, but now it’s about who’s the best, and it can be us. We have the best skills, we import the best materials, and the internet allows us to find our customers. The customer still gets a great jean at great value.
My advice would be make a great product, tell your story and mostly, start.
What does community mean to you?
Being part of something where everyone is as important as each other and values one another’s opinion.
To be part of a community is a privilege.
