The Industrial Commons is a nonprofit organization based in Morganton, NC, whose goals are to help “root wealth locally and across the Appalachian region,” according to communications director Sarah Crisp. The organization was co-founded in 2015 by Molly Hemstreet after identifying a need for the revitalization of the textile industry, a lack of quality jobs and encouragement for young people to stay in the area.
Since then, the Industrial Commons has supported over 500 for-profit and nonprofit businesses, trained over 5,000 workers and generated $95.5 million in revenue, according to the Industrial Commons website.
Matt Edwards, director of business development, explained that their North Carolina region holds most of what is left of American-made textile factories, and it’s important to protect them.
“The backbone of the economy in North Carolina in general, and especially Western and Central North Carolina, was textiles and furniture,” he said. “As these jobs started offshoring, it created an economic crisis in the area that we’re still recovering from. To help support those industries that are remaining and give them a source to utilize their waste to keep it out of the landfill, to repurpose it, and to create the branding and marketing strength of being able to tell a true ‘Made in the USA’ story.”
Sarah explained some programs supported in the ecosystem, such as TOSSafter, a K-8, after-school arts advocacy program, and a National Science Foundation Textile Innovation Engines. She also described some of the Industrial Commons job, internship placement opportunities and work in Burke.
In addition to workforce development, the Industrial Commons is known for its skilled training courses, specifically in industrial sewing.
“We train individuals in industrial sewing [18+] to be able to work in the textile industry, and they can land a job easier once they’ve been trained on how to operate an industrial sewing machine,” she said.
Sarah said the company was founded on “cooperative values” and giving a voice to everyone involved, which includes staff members sitting on boards of directors and providing leadership training opportunities.
“The Industrial Commons is really like the umbrella organization,” she said. “We call ourselves an ecosystem.”
Matt, spoke about one of the Industrial Common’s first businesses, Material Return.
“Material Return started as a textile waste material aggregator,” he said. “So, we were taking in textile waste from local mills, furniture companies, the upholstery waste, sock mills, the knitting waste, things of that nature, and we were basically sorting them, aggregating them and selling them to companies that would take that waste and turn it into things like car insulation, fiberboard and acoustic insulation.”
Since its inception, Matt said the organization prioritizes transforming waste back into “fiber form.”
“Anything that is knitted with a yarn or thread, we can essentially take recycled material, incorporate it into a yarn to create a circular recycled yarn that feeds back into production,” he said.
Matt stressed the importance of keeping textile waste out of landfills to protect our environment and provide the most economic return to textile companies.
“There are still a decent amount of textile mills around, but the mills that are around, the vast majority of them are sending that waste to the landfill. That’s the easiest, simplest solution for them. That’s the most cost-effective solution,” he said. “You have to identify companies that it’s important to them…in order to have sustainable initiatives and keep the material out of a landfill. But, when you approach them and pitch them a better concept economically, like ‘Hey, instead of selling this stuff for two cents a pound and costing yourselves more money than it would cost you to send to the landfill, you can retain a lot more of that economic value.’”
One of the organization’s upcoming projects, The Innovation Campus, is a revitalization of a 28-acre furniture factory into a small business incubator that small textile-based businesses can rent.
Sarah stressed that the Industrial Commons is important to the community because it shows locals that they don’t need to move away to be successful financially and creatively.
“Innovation can be born here,” she said. “There’s opportunity here for people to live and work and have great lives and be able to participate in the place that they work in and be valued for their job.”
Sarah is proud of the Industrial Common’s efforts to provide hope for locals and avoid external monopolists from taking over the region.
The whole purpose of us existing is to root wealth locally,” she said. “We want to avoid extraction. So, all the offshoring that happened with furniture and textiles in the past, we want to avoid that, and we want to bring wealth back locally to our community, but also to the Appalachian region.”
As a Burke County native, Matt said he and many others have a sense of pride knowing that the “best furniture in the world” was made in their backyard.
Sarah is also from Burke County and feels a strong connection to her roots by working at Industrial Commons.
“My grandmother worked in the building that I work in now, at the Carolina Shoe” she said. “My dad worked as an intern at Drexel Three and Five, the plot of land that the campus we’re building on. A lot of this is familial. People have a history in the textile and furniture industry here because so many generations of folks worked there.”
The Industrial Commons is made possible by funding from the National Science Foundation and other federal and private funders. Learn more about the company’s sponsorships and revitalization efforts at www.theindustrialcommons.org/.
