We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hilary Crowell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Hilary, thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

I went into full time business with The Cultivated Thread as I was phasing out of full time work as an organic produce farmer. Farming was such an important part of my life – I can’t stress this enough – that I wanted a name that nodded both to my past, agriculture, and my future, textiles. The term cultivate is a wonderful word. In organic crop production it is both a broad and specific word, often referring to mechanical weed removal. After the cultivating tractor has gone through a bed it looks so tidy – weeds are removed from between rows and what was once a carpet of green is now clean rows of production crops. It’s immensely satisfying (when everything goes right!). And parallels could be drawn between these neat rows and the act of keeping hundreds of threads organized on a loom. To me, crops and threads symbolize potential.  When nourished and tended,they will take the energy put into them and transform into delicious, healthful food and soft, beautiful cloth.

I mentioned that cultivate can have multiple meanings; be both detailed and broad. In a broader and less tangible sense, I want TCT to be a good community member. As a small business owner, I am one part of a larger whole in my surrounding community. How can TCT contribute to the neighborhood, to the Maine craft community, to the customers that are served, to the land where we call home and the people we took it from? There always seem to be more questions than answers and I’ll forever be learning and refining. But through all the evolutions,‘cultivate’ will remain important in this way – cultivating community.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The Cultivated Thread is a small-batch weaving studio in Mid Coast Maine creating handwoven wearables and home goods. It’s mostly a one person operation though I do contract out a few specific production tasks. I’m most interested in making products that can easily slide into people’s day to day lives so I primarily make handwoven towels. I work exclusively with natural fibers and strive to source organic and/or U.S. produced materials.

In 2020, after years feeling challenged by mental health struggles that aligned with the farming calendar, I left the agriculture world I’d called home for over a decade and launched The Cultivated Thread. It was a huge shift for me; the rhythm of farming – cultivating vegetables, tending livestock, and cutting firewood – defined my life’s pace and meaning. During the colder, darker months weaving was a treasured meditation and opportunity to create. Starting a business was unfamiliar and scary but I knew weaving. I was going in a new, but not entirely foreign, direction.

As I mentioned, TCT is most known for its handwoven towels. When I say handwoven, I mean literally every thread is placed by hand. I use a small floor loom and like to joke that if the power goes out I can keep weaving because it is human powered (though weaving is only about a quarter of the total manufacturing process). Playing with color is one of my favorite creative parts of the work and I am constantly designing new colorways. I create with daily use in mind and select weave structures and fibers that will translate into items that stand the test of time. By bringing intentionality and care into all stages of the production process, it is my hope that in each piece I am infusing energy, utility, and beauty that will offer a lifetime of service. I make functional art.

Customers love TCT towels because they are soft, absorbent and rugged. They’re designed to perform a job which also includes being machine washed and dried – easy maintenance. And they last! My first towels were sold 5 years ago and I’m still hearing from early customers about their TCT towel that is still a staple in their kitchen or bathroom.

In tandem with production, there are a host of conversations related to identity and ethics that I continue to uncover and explore as a small business owner. Knowing that there will always be more to learn and mistakes will be made along the way, I seek to understand the impact, privileges, and responsibilities I have as a white, cis-gendered female business owner and human.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Before starting TCT I took several in depth business courses and wrote more than one business plan for farms I never started. Along the way, I got the idea in my head that having an excess of inventory is a bad sign for the business.

It took me two years to realize that the holidays are when I have the highest sales and make a good bulk of my income. Handwoven towels are not a quick thing to make and so after two fourth quarters of weaving at a breakneck and unsustainable rate, I learned that I needed to start tucking product away throughout the year to balance my annual work flow.

Now I start creating my holiday stash in January and rather than feeling stressed by having product stacking up in my studio, I feel prepared and confident. Realizing that there’s no rule book for running a small business has been important in my journey. Unlearning what I thought was a hard and fast rule about product on the shelves has been a good reminder of that. For TCT, inventory on the shelf is money in the bank.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

In a nutshell, the two most important factors are the high quality and unique nature of my product and the incredible retailers I’ve been able to work with. My wholesale program is small and not scalable. TCT towels have been in a beloved local kitchen store, a refill store, farm to table restaurants, and coffee shops; the kind of places where customers are looking for high quality products and are willing to pay more to support U.S. manufacturing and local business. Maine is an incredible place to be both a small business owner and a maker – there is a strong love for local and handmade goods and loads of support for operating a business. I love the customers, both retail buyers and individuals, that I’ve gotten to know over the years and feel so lucky to be doing this work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thecultivatedthread.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/thecultivatedthread
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/cultivatedthread

Image Credits
Katie Kelley Lauryn Hottinger