Knitting Firm Widens Rural Workers' Options -- Nonprofit Creates Job Network In Appalachia

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Margie Manahan was thrown from a horse two years ago and injured her knee. As a result, she lost her job training horses. What to do instead?

Her options were limited. A single mother of four, Manahan lives in a mountaintop home with no running water. The postman is her only daily visitor. "I am hanging on to that last bit of being a frontier woman," she says.

She took up knitting, hooking up with Appalachian By Design Inc., a nonprofit company with about 40 knitters in West Virginia, western Maryland and southern Pennsylvania.

Her sweaters and hats, knitted on a machine, now provide 75 percent of her income. The rest comes from odd knitting jobs, farming and her garden in Renick, about 100 miles east of Charleston.

As she works, she cans tomatoes in the kitchen, then takes a break to see her children off for their mile trek to the school-bus stop, and to feed her two horses.

Appalachian By Design is for people in remote areas with many demands on their time, according to President Diane Browning. "The work fits their life instead of making their life fit work," Browning says.

Appalachian By Design is a marketing agent for knitters, all but one of whom are women.

The knitters work on their own machines, shipping their pieces, mostly sweaters, to two Appalachian By Design centers in Lewisburg, and Terra Alta, W.Va., where the products are prepared for wholesalers and designers.

This year, the company hopes to contract for as many as 10,000 knitwear pieces, mostly sweaters and a few caps and shawls, Browning says.

The Utne Reader magazine recently selected Appalachian By Design Inc. as one of 10 "Good Works" companies. "It's an example of what can happen when the goal of cottage industry is not isolation and exploitation, but access and independence," the magazine said.

Victorian shawls made by the knitters were among 20 products chosen to represent West Virginia on QVC Inc., the Home Shopping Network, as part of its promotion, "The Quest for America's Best," featuring products from every state.

Appalachian By Design started in 1991 when Browning, who was working for an economic-development group, received a call from Esprit International seeking help creating a line for its now-defunct European label.

She rounded up eight knitters to meet with company officials and won the bid. Now her company has 11 regular customers.

"Our strategy is combining everyone's production efforts to enter this next layer of market that no one could enter on their own," Browning says.

The concept was designed for Appalachia, where many people are scattered throughout the rugged hills and hollows without the ability or desire to commute to work.

The knitters earn between $6.50 and $10 an hour, depending on skill.

From April 1994 through June 1995, Appalachian By Design had sales of $165,000.

More than 25 miles from Romney, W.Va., Barbara Killmeyer of Capon Bridge, a mountain town of only about 2,000, says she would not be working otherwise.

Killmeyer, 57, had no plans to work outside her home. She cared for her ailing mother-in-law, who has since moved to a nursing home, and for her son, who is disabled and lives at home.

The only setback for would-be knitters could be about $1,500 for a machine, Killmeyer says, but it quickly pays for itself. The company is trying to arrange a leasing program.