Our Innovation, Our Story, Our Vision

Our Innovation

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.

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

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.

Our Story

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 is Maggie’s Menagerie followed by the Barnyard Series (designed by the coop).

All of these lovable animals are designed from Maggie’s slightly irregular Crew socks. We use pre-consumer polyester mill scrap for the stuffing as it provides the smoothness and loft that our animals need and survives machine washing. It also comes from a plant in South Carolina saving both freight and fuel. Because of Maggie’s support and vision, we have gotten our cut and sew cooperative off the ground! We are now working with other clients and are steadily and sustainably growing our business.

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.

Our Vision

Our vision is to have a full scale worker-owned, eco-textile apparel line in the heart of Southern Appalachia’s traditional textile country which employs traditional Appalachian and immigrant workers. Where most manufacturing work in Appalachia has not been environmentally friendly, this will be environmentally focused, using mostly organic cotton and focusing on micro-manufacturing. Where most labor in Appalachia has traditionally been tenuous and extractive - this will use a worker-ownership model to build assets, pay living wages, and retain and grow capital in our own local communities.