Welcome To The Welsh Town Making Great Jeans

When people talk about the great denim capitals of the world, they rarely mention a small coastal town in West Wales. Yet Cardigan, with a population of just 4,000, once made 35,000 pairs of jeans a week. For half a century, the factory at its centre shaped daily life. Generations learned to cut, sew and finish denim with a level of skill that could only be built through time, repetition and pride.

Then, in 2002, the work was moved offshore. Four hundred artisans lost their livelihoods overnight. The lights went off. A craft that had defined a town was suddenly without a home. A decade later, Hiut Denim set out to reverse that story.

Founded in 2012, Hiut wasn’t created to rebuild the past, but to reclaim something essential from it: the belief that craftsmanship still matters. The aim was simple but ambitious. To bring the jobs back to Cardigan, honour the lifetime of skill that had been lost, and prove that a modern business could be built not on scale, but on devotion to the craft.

And so the old cutters, sewers and machinists returned. First a few, then more. They taught what they knew. They trained a new generation. Slowly and quietly, the sound of making returned to the town.

Hiut’s philosophy has remained clear: make the best, not the most. Every pair of jeans begins with cloth woven on traditional shuttle looms by artisan mills in Japan and Italy. Every panel is cut by human hands, some of whom have been doing so for over 60 years. Every stitch is then sewn in the Cardigan factory, where precision isn’t a slogan; it’s a form of respect for the craft, for the environment, for the wearer, and for the community that depends on the work.

To us, craftsmanship isn’t a romantic idea. It’s a way of building a life. A way of proving that care, skill and purpose still have a place in business. A way of showing that progress and tradition can move forward together. Our mission is to inspire a beautiful everyday life through craftsmanship.

Hiut exists to keep an art form alive. Not out of nostalgia, but because the future needs businesses that value quality, environmental responsibility and community over shortcuts. Because the world is better when work is meaningful, when products are built to last, and when the hands behind them are given the respect they deserve.

So our quiet town in Wales is making jeans again. And in doing so, we’re proving that craftsmanship still has the power to change everything.