Alabama Chanin

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Slow Economy? Slow Design.

In Florence, Alabama, dendritic suburban development extends well into neighboring cotton fields, where surface parking and big box architecture stand in striking opposition to a rural southern landscape. It is here, in an unassuming warehouse at the edge of this newest ring of growth, that the surprisingly rooted headquarters of Alabama Chanin have taken hold.

While Alabama Chanin strikes a low physical profile in this drosscape, the company is making waves in national and international couture circuits. It is known among design enthusiasts for neatly packaging the essence of rural Alabama, delivering artisan textiles, handmade luminaires, and resurrected furniture to high-end urban stores. And although this reputation for cultural exports is well-earned, founder Natalie Chanin has crafted a company which ultimately hinges upon the regional relationships that shape her labor pool, materials and aesthetic.

From the company’s origin as Project Alabama in 2000, to its current identity as Alabama Chanin, its business model has evolved into a comprehensive and idealistic experiment in feel-good social entrepreneurship. Chanin‘s vision bundles together storytelling, social justice, workers rights, environmental stewardship, profitability, a reverence for the art of making, and the preservation of rural craft. Today, one-off designs are made from recycled, sustainable, or organic materials, constructed by over thirty local artisans who demand living wages. In 2008, The New York Times ran an article on this company that popularized the term slow design, stating that “Alabama Chanin is run on the tenets of the Slow Food movement, which essentially challenges one to use local ingredients harvested and put together in a socially and environmentally responsible way.”¹

Chanin’s design work celebrates local culture through symbolism, stories and craft. This regionalism wouldn’t be possible without a local labor force, and Alabama Chanin incorporates a design/build structure to attract regional talent. These men and women act as individual business owners, purchasing raw materials from the Alabama Chanin facility and constructing every piece that they sell to order, for a price that they bid themselves. Natalie Chanin calls it a “contemporary cottage industry,” and maintains that these craftspeople are in complete control over what they take on, as well as when and where they do the work.

Alabama Chanin also sets a progressive agenda for sustainability, with practices that codify material up-cycling and draw from Toyota’s lean method of manufacturing. Most recently Chanin applied the theory of stacking—which has its roots in farming practices—to her holistic vision for the company. “When I read about stacking in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I realized that you can use this same logic for other businesses as well,” said Chanin. “In this model, every waste product provides for another part of the farm.” Moreover, these techniques are working: “We are very close to becoming a zero waste industry,” said Chanin, “at the moment, our factory creates one bag of garbage per week.”

This sustainability agenda extends beyond Alabama Chanin’s tiny carbon footprint. While environmentalists now advocate for a definition of sustainability that incorporates what they call the “triple bottom line of social justice, environmental stewardship and economic sensibility,” Alabama Chanin has long supported this three-pronged model. The company’s minimal waste, empowerment of local artisans, and organizational fiscal sustainability offer a holistic approach to slow design. Until recently, Alabama Chanin’s weakest link has been a socio-economic one: product affordability and universal access.

Barriers to affordability haunt many in the design field today. While Alabama Chanin’s design work celebrated regional poverty and came from the hands of the workforce, their finished products remained ironically out of reach. Chanin recognized this ideological rift and also understood the affordability gap to be a business opportunity as well. The company began to develop products and services that would operate along a sort of sliding scale.

Although the traditional line of Alabama Chanin products are still available at high-end galleries and boutiques today, the company now sells do-it-yourself project kits on their website, at or near cost. These kits and fabrics cater to a new type of customer, those of the frugal, crafty set. Chanin’s open-source work became widespread when she published her patterns in a book, which also teaches stitching techniques and material selection. More recently, Chanin has begun to explore ways of making her company’s design work more accessible than before, primarily through lectures and workshops.

While Alabama Chanin has been designed to function as a for-profit enterprise, Natalie Chanin regularly folds in less profitable components. Occasionally the profit from entire lines will be donated to local charities, such as their own Artisan Outreach Program, and the two full scholarships for every workshop offered help to grow a diverse base of talented local artisans. Chanin’s research and findings are published through a journal on the company’s website, along with other open-source ideas and designs. Chanin also works on products that she calls “fuel for my soul,” such as the oral histories she’s been collecting from aging rural textile workers. Although these stories are sometimes incorporated into restored quilts and rehabilitated chairs, they primarily serve as inspiration for the work that Alabama Chanin produces. According to Chanin, these types of programs “rarely become money makers, but are important work all the same.”

Alabama Chanin’s distinctive brand of sustainability and local allegiance may well help the company to weather these trying economic times. The company’s repurposed materials possess an inherent economy, while providing real commentary on the importance of thrift and the value of honoring existing resources. Alabama Chanin provides flexible and fair employment that supports a job-starved local economy. Finally, their sliding scale retail approach may offer just enough diversity in terms of affordability to ensure its continued tenure.

1 Penelope Green – The New York Times, January 31, 2008.

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