This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.
After Nick and Kate Bergmann of Bath became parents a decade ago, they struggled to find clothing for their young kids that wouldn’t quickly fall apart and have to get tossed into the dump.
But Kate Bergmann, a Maine native, had sewed from a young age, so they decided to make the clothes themselves. That decision put them on the path to starting their own business in 2020, Peace House Studio, which makes cotton sweatshirts and pants, as well as kids shorts and tank tops.
Using organic fabrics made in the U.S., they assemble the bright, colorful clothes in a studio above their garage. While the items are not cheap — their kids sweatshirts range in price from $39 to $64 — the couple has found enough demand that they have added adult sizes and are now trying to move into a bigger production space.
The couple recently won the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs’ Top Gun competition, earning a $25,000 cash prize that will help them expand.
Their growth has highlighted a broader demand among consumers in Maine and beyond, who have grown weary of the fast fashion trend that has flooded the market with cheaply made clothes that feature more synthetic materials and are making textiles one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. waste stream. Some shoppers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for more long-lasting U.S.-made threads.
A more legacy midcoast business, Liberty Graphics, has also found a growing market for its Maine-made T-shirts that incorporate water-based inks into the colorful imagery of nature featured on many of its garments. It has just opened a new outlet store in Freeport, to join its other locations in Liberty, Camden and Portland.
In Bath, the Bergmanns have adopted a motto for their own business: “Clothing belongs on people, not in landfills.”
To help manage their growth, the pair has hired one part-time employee, as well as an intern who has helped to manage branding and online orders. They brought in $80,000 in revenue last year.
Through an initiative called the Patches Project, they also buy-back clothes of theirs so that they can be refurbished and sold again.
“When we did start a business, we thought, ‘What can we do that’s different’ — and better, hopefully,” Nick Bergmann said. “We all now can see the environmental harm that the overproduction of clothing can really cause. Not just environmentally, but socially, with the impact of poor labor practices, unsafe conditions for people to make clothing in.”
