Hiut

Hiut Denim was founded in 2011 in Cardigan, Wales, by husband-and-wife team David and Clare Hieatt, who had previously built the eco-conscious clothing label Howies (founded 1995) before selling it. Cardigan had been a denim manufacturing town for decades, home to a factory that once employed around 400 people and produced roughly 35,000 pairs of jeans a week, until it closed in 2002 and the specialist skills of local machinists went idle. Rather than trying to recreate that scale, the Hieatts built Hiut around a small, deliberately slow model: a limited crew they call 'grand masters,' each an experienced denim maker, producing about 100 pairs of jeans a week by hand, prioritizing quality and craft over volume. The company has publicly framed its identity around doing one thing only — making jeans — rather than diversifying into a broader clothing range. More recently, David and Clare Hieatt stepped back from day-to-day leadership, handing the company to new investors who came on board in a transition reported in trade press.