Our story starts with a strong partnership and a dream. In 1999, Maggie’s Functional Organic’s president, Bena Burda, helped start a worker-owned sewing cooperative in Nicaragua. The folks at Maggie’s always wanted to bring the model of worker-ownership back to the US, and specifically to areas that have been hit by job loss in the apparel industry, and even more specifically to North Carolina where the majority of their socks are still knit.
Bena was invited, by worker-ownership pioneer Frank Adams, to speak at a conference in Asheville North Carolina. There Bena met the folks from SACCO (Southern Appalachian Center for Cooperative Ownership/Ownership Appalachia). Organizers from SACCO and the Center for Participatory Change (CPC) made the connection with the workers, all from Morganton, NC, which is one of the many towns across the South with boarded up manufacturing mills, talented workers, and extremely high unemployment. The designers and visionaries at Maggie’s, along with the workers in Morganton, started working on designs. The result was Maggie’s Menagerie followed by the Barnyard Series (designed by the co-op).
Since our beginnings with Maggie’s we have worked with over 30 local, regional and national companies to bring their ideas to life. We are encouraged by the number of small and large companies that would like to support local production and have their products made in a worker-owned facility. At Opportunity Threads we feel that our company truly embodies the triple bottom line- where there are environmental, social, and economic benefits for a community. Please contact us to learn more about our story or to work with us on product design or production.