Howies founders David and Clare Hieatt have launched a new venture, Hiut Denim Co, to revive Cardigan's denim industry

BY Georgia Dehn | 23 March 2012

In May last year the entrepreneur David Hieatt appeared on the front page of his local newspaper in Cardigan, west Wales, appealing for skilled machinists with specialist knowledge of making jeans to work in a new denim factory in the area. Hieatt, who founded the action sports clothing company Howies in 1995 with his wife, Clare (they sold it to Timberland in 2006), was in the process of launching a new venture, Hiut Denim Co. In response to the newspaper article, he was inundated with applications from locals, many of whom said the same thing: 'I want to make jeans again.'

Almost a decade ago, 400 people in Cardigan, a tenth of the town's population, with hundreds of years' experience making jeans between them, were made redundant when the Dewhirst Group shut the doors to its clothing factory and moved production to Morocco. Dewhirst was Cardigan's biggest employer and the factory had been producing 35,000 pairs of jeans each week for the likes of Marks & Spencer and Gap. Hieatt wanted to give locals the opportunity to put their skills to good use again. He rented an industrial unit, in which the company has now been installed for three months. The walls are clad in pitch pine from an old flour mill and Hieatt bought 24 sewing machines from an old Wrangler factory in Poland. After interviewing 'lots of eager women' who used to work at Dewhirst, he hired three and named them his 'Grand Masters'. Hieatt also took on a cutter who had worked at Dewhirst for 38 years, and a mechanic to fix the machines when they went wrong.

Hiut Denim Co may be a tiny start-up, but 'Levi's started small too,' Hieatt says. 'Our aim for the first year is to sell 2,500 pairs of jeans.' Mostly they will be sold online, but also in about 20 specialist denim shops around the world. Hieatt wants to build up the company so that he can offer everyone who worked at Dewhirst their old job back: 'We have to get everyone in this town making jeans again.' At a time when provenance matters greatly to consumers, manufacturing his product in Britain gives Hiut Denim Co a head start in the market, but Hieatt says he 'can't count on craftsmanship alone'. What he needs to do, he says, is to 'change the jeans industry through ideas.'

Hieatt is an ideas man and always has been. Before establishing Howies, he worked as a copywriter at the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency in London. 'I was working with bright and driven people,' he says. After Howies, he and Clare founded the Do Lectures - a five-day event (now in its fifth year) at an upmarket campsite in west Wales to which they invite inspiring individuals from around the world, including authors and entrepreneurs, to 'come and tell us what they do'. It is essentially a festival of good ideas, a 'Glastonbury of the mind'.

Hieatt has called on some of his more technologically minded friends to help him with his big idea for Hiut Denim Co. 'We are building an app called History Tag,' he says, 'and our jeans will be the first in the world that will have their whole history recorded.' To start with, Hiut Denim Co will sell two styles (men's only): one in selvage denim (sourced in Japan), the unwashed, raw, real indigo kind; and one in organic denim (sourced in Turkey). Each pair produced will have a code sewn into them and at each stage of production Hieatt's Grand Masters will photograph the jeans for the History Tag app - 'so when you buy a pair of jeans you will not only get a receipt, you will get pictures of your jeans being born. As you go through your life with your jeans you will be able to upload all your pictures of where you go and what you did wearing them,' he says. 'Then when those jeans are handed down or end up in a second-hand store, their history will go along with them too. This idea will become a badge of honour for companies who make products that last, and the longer you make something last the more stories it has to tell.'

hiutdenim.co.uk

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Huit Denim Co: The jeans with the app that tells their history