Welsh town’s skills and craftsmanship celebrated with rebrand of premium jeans company
The chief executive of a Welsh denim company has spoken about the importance of preserving traditional manufacturing skills in a town once known as Britain’s jeans capital.
Hiut Denim, founded in 2012 by husband and wife David and Clare Hieatt, was established in Cardigan following the closure of the town’s largest jeans factory nearly a decade earlier.
At its peak, the factory employed around 400 people and produced 35,000 pairs of jeans each week for Marks & Spencer, before manufacturing moved overseas to Morocco in 2002.
Writing for Grounded Magazine, Hiut chief executive Johann von Loeper reflected on the legacy of the workers who remained in the town and the company’s mission to keep their skills alive.
Referring to Cardigan as one of “the great denim capitals of the world”, von Loeper explains how “generations learned to cut, sew and finish denim” due to its factory.
“Then, in 2002, the work was moved offshore. Four hundred artisans lost their livelihoods overnight. The lights went off. A craft that had defined a town was suddenly without a home,” he writes.
Hiut was created to “reverse that story”, set up with the explicit aim to bring jobs in denim back to Cardigan and celebrate the skills that were lost.
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The cloth used in their jeans is woven in Japan and Italy, before being cut from paper patterns, seamed by machinists and sewn in Cardigan, with each pair signed by its maker with a unique mark.
As the “old cutters, sewers and machinists returned”, some who had spent six decades perfecting their craft, von Loeper recounts how they passed on their skills to the next generation working with Hiut.
These experienced workers are known as Grand Masters, and Hiut says they set the standard at the factory, giving “younger makers something precise to learn from, so the skill that remained in Aberteifi continues to move forward.”
The company also offers free repairs for life on every pair it sells, arguing that denim should be maintained and worn for years rather than treated as a disposable product.
Customers can return worn jeans to the Cardigan factory, where they are repaired by the workers and returned for continued use.
Von Loeper goes on to say: “Hiut exists to keep an art form alive. Not out of nostalgia, but because the future needs businesses that value quality, environmental responsibility and community over shortcuts…
“So our quiet town in Wales is making jeans again. And in doing so, we’re proving that craftsmanship still has the power to change everything.”
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The company also recently underwent a rebrand, partnering with design agency Pentagram to develop a new logo and colour palette inspired by Cardigan, the factory and its makers.
Hugh Miller of Pentagram said: “The countryside around Cardigan is never far from the story of Hiut. It shapes the pace of life, the quality of light, and the character of the people who work there.”
To find out more, visit Hiut’s site here.
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