Pure New Wool

Spend a stormy December evening in the Outer Hebrides and you'll understand why the locals invented Harris tweed. The turnaround began in November 2007, when a new company called Harris Tweed Hebrides (HTH) bought and reopened a mothballed mill, in the village of Shawbost, and launched a bold,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fast company 2009-06 (136), p.44
Main Author: Bates, Theunis
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Business growth
Design
Fabrics
Fashion designers
Menswear
Success factors
Textiles
Yarn
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Spend a stormy December evening in the Outer Hebrides and you'll understand why the locals invented Harris tweed. The turnaround began in November 2007, when a new company called Harris Tweed Hebrides (HTH) bought and reopened a mothballed mill, in the village of Shawbost, and launched a bold, design-driven campaign to restore the cloth to popularity. HTH owes some of its success to the 2006 sale of Lewis's largest mill, Kenneth Mackenzie Ltd, which produced 95% of all Harris tweed, to English entrepreneur Brian Haggas. The new owner stopped selling to the apparel trade and cut production to just four tweeds for his own fusty range of men's jackets. Graven Images director Ross Hunter says the mill's old strategy of turning out more and more patterns at cheaper and cheaper prices damaged the fabric's upmarket reputation. In its first eight months, the reopened Shawbost plant spun out more than 200,000 meters of tweed.
ISSN:1085-9241
1943-2623