Buyback Baltimore's Needle Trades

Stacy Stube is organizing this fundraiser.

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Baltimore was once second to New York for its garment district, but by the 1970's there was a mass exodus mainly due to the rise in offshore competition and the fight for workers advocating for an increase in wages by the unions.

Overnight all the factories closed and so too went the trade schools and skills. 50-years later a Baltimore Fashion Renaissance began to emerge when Stacy Stube an Indonesian American fashion entrepreneur returned to her hometown of Baltimore after years abroad.

She worked for one of the last factories from the original Baltimore garment industry and began advocating for the entrepreneurs looking to create change and impact through innovation and business creation.

After seeing legends of the garment industry die suddenly of old age, Stacy was driven to ensure that the industry not only survive but thrive in a new and more responsible way.

In 2021, Stube ran 200-miles in 8-days to fundraise to convert an abandoned garment factory into a school SEW BROMO to keep fashion heritage skills alive. As a result of that campaign the entire space of almost 20,000 sq ft has activated into a Needle Trades district with various entrepreneurs, nonprofits and organizations driven to cultivate a new era of industry.

As these independent organizations began to cluster as impact driven makers the original long cutting table and factory space was taken apart to be shared with the various stitchers and companies. This was such wonderful news for the newly formed grassroots Needle Trades District.

But what Stacy began to see as the big need and solution to reboot the Needle Trades of Baltimore is to Buy it Back. Baltimore is the hometown and head quarters for one of the world's largest activewear company, yet that company does little to no production stateside.

Knowing this reality, Stube began to realize that it is going to be up to the start-up impact driven entrepreneurs and consumers to Buyback Baltimore' Needle Trades through the products it develops and the purchases that are made.

The one big and important problem is that Baltimore no longer has factories as it once did making high quality fashion products and soft good innovations on an industrial level. The few that do remain are at capacity and/or do that have the ability to product develop and/or produce small batch production.

This limitation hinders innovation and new product/businesses launches. That is where the Fashion Innovation Hub steps in to provide programming for these start-up entrepreneurs in partnership with SEW BROMO so they can grow to beta test concepts and pre-sell product via crowdfunding to test the viability of their business product pitch.

This Buyback Baltimore's Needle Trades campaign is fundraising through the nonprofit side of SEW BROMO that was recently awarded the TEDCO Makerspace programming grant of $25,000 to develop and launch the Needle Trades All Star program in partnership with the Baltimore Innovation Center to activate at 8,300 sq ft space for a Fashion Innovation Hub for a feasibility study from December 2023 - May 2024.

This leads to the 333 mile run that Stacy Stube, Nicole Myrick (Founder of Icosa Apparel) will do in May 2024 over the span of 10-days so that is 33-miles a day.

The longest distance runner for Indonesia Valentine Lily will fly to Baltimore from Bali for this Bali to Baltimore 2024 run to activate Baltimore's Needle Trades.

The funds for this campaign will fund equipment, factory production and innovation development for the Needle Trades All Stars to incubate the next era of innovation.

The goal is from the success of the Fashion Innovation Hub feasibility study that from June 2024 - June 2025 that FIH can move into a pilot operation for 1-year with micro production runs within the facility funded by the entrepreneurs themselves are they build momentum and pay though the program membership with the Fashion Entrepreneur Needle Trades membership.

We are thankful for our current partners and past programming to include:

TEDCO & Open Works Makerspace Grant 2023

Innovation Works - Boost Program - Fellow 2023

Johns Hopkins Social Innovation Lab - Fellow 2023

Halcyon - Opportunity Intensive Fellow 2021

Awesome Baltimore Grant

Maryland State Arts Council