Our Values
Our vision is to develop a full scale worker-owned, eco-textile cut and sew plant in the heart of Southern Appalachia’s traditional textile country. We are well on the way to this vision! Where most manufacturing work in Appalachia has not been environmentally friendly, we are environmentally focused, using mostly organic cotton and focusing on micro-manufacturing. Where most labor in Appalachia has traditionally been tenuous and extractive, we use a worker-ownership model to build assets, pay living wages, and retain and grow capital in our own local communities.
Our values and assets include:
- Dignity for Workers
- Fair Wages and Worker-Ownership
- Passion for and Connection to Local Supply Chains
- Quality
- Sustainable Production
- Flexibility, Problem-Solving Approach
- Personable and Responsive
- Ability to Work with “Green” Textiles and Reclaimed Materials
Our Work
We are a worker-owned, cut and sew cooperative based in Morganton, North Carolina. We value and provide quality, reliability and a personal relationship with clients who want to know the story and face behind the products that they sell. We work with small and large companies- national companies like Maggie’s Functional Organics, and small entrepreneurs that are just getting started.
Like many other small Southern communities, we have watched manufacturing leave- leaving our communities with record unemployment and acres of unused plants and equipment. Our effectiveness and innovation comes from putting the workers at the center through the model of worker-ownership and creating a cost-effective business whose assets are rooted and owned by the community and whose practices are sustainable. In the larger picture, we are recreating textile work in Southern Appalachia with an emphasis on fair labor and sustainable environmental practices.
At Opportunity Threads we are taking the pieces of a puzzle we see in our struggling Appalachian communities and we are putting them together to create lasting social change: skilled workers, unused manufacturing space, and once idle machines are producing textiles for a burgeoning fair-trade, “green” market. This model of worker-ownership has the potential to change the lives of many workers, both native and immigrant, in our region as they build assets and hone skills. The emphasis on “green products and production” looks to reverse the trend of anti-environmental manufacturing and worker marginalization that has plagued Appalachia.