Molly Hemstreet
Revitalizing the U.S. textile industry with a sustainable, worker-centered approach.
Molly Hemstreet grew up in Morganton, NC, where textile mills once provided stable jobs. She remembers waking up to the sound of factory horns—a rhythm that, one day, suddenly faded. When a local plant closed, leaving 600 workers without jobs, Hemstreet saw the toll it took on her neighbors. By the time she left for college, Morganton’s unemployment rate had soared to 17 percent.
After studying alternative economic models, Hemstreet founded Opportunity Threads in 2008, now the largest worker-owned cut-and-sew facility in the U.S. What began as a small experiment grew into a larger vision. In 2015, she co-founded The Industrial Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to rebuilding North Carolina’s textile industry by providing job training and supporting sustainable, worker-owned businesses. Her work proves that the textile industry’s future can be both profitable and fair, with benefits returning to the communities that power it.
The once-storied textile region where The Industrial Commons operates has seen its fortunes decline in part because the industry’s economic model has not supported local entrepreneurs and workers. Materials are sourced from afar, jobs are moved to other regions, and profits are maximized for shareholders rather than the folks who built the industry. But what if supply chains for the textile industry were built differently?
As an Emerson Collective Fellow, Hemstreet will research, plan, and pilot a cooperative supply chain for her local textile industry. Under this model, employees have ownership in businesses, and businesses at different levels of the production process work together to plan and allocate resources, industrywide, to the benefit of all. After conducting worker-led research, Hemstreet and her colleagues will bring their learnings back to North Carolina and pilot a new cooperative approach designed to build lasting prosperity.