November 4, 2013
Happy One Year!
What a year this has been! We started with a pretty simple vision: Make the best jeans we can out of the most sustainable materials we can find. We knew we wanted to work with friends and be open-handed with our knowledge to train apprentices and interns in the art of making clothes.
Wendy, our apprentice, started with us two weeks before Noble launched last November. She had sewn since she was a little girl but had never really had the chance to hone her skills. At first she was rusty and pretty darn slow, but she was eager. She cared a ton and chose to stay engaged even after I made her rip thousands of stitches to get it right. Now Wendy is an integral part of the jean making process in our Cincinnati workshop. She sews the entire back of the jean and they are about as close to perfect as a human can make.
For the first seven months we could make five to eight pairs of jeans a week. We made every pair to order and placed the customer’s name on a sticker on their jean. We felt like we knew them by the time their jeans went out.
We are so thankful to have been able to work slow and steady over this last year. To be able to learn and to fine tune our product based off of what our friends, family and customers had to say.
I look over this last year with incredible fondness and a heavy dose of exhaustion. It has been the hardest we have ever worked but it has been more fun than we could have imagined.
Thank you for being a part of this adventure with us. Thanks for buying our jeans, for giving us your feedback and for choosing to invest in a new generation of American manufacturers. We really feel honored that you have been a part of our small company and are super excited for what is next.
Cheers,
Chris
