Student entrepreneur offers custom clothing
Nora Hewitt, a senior at West Davidson High School, holds up one of her newer custom sweatshirts with a self-care saying. For the past year, she has sold her line of apparel on Etsy to make money for college. {Vikki Broughton Hodges/Davidson Local}
Student entrepreneur wants to support herself in college
A teenage fashionista and bargain hunter, Nora Hewitt, launched her own custom apparel line on Etsy in November of 2020 and hopes to continue the business to help with college costs.
A 17-year-old senior at West Davidson High School, where she is a Beta Club member and member of the varsity volleyball team, Hewitt actually began her foray into entrepreneurship selling vintage clothing on Instagram in 2018.
“I didn’t have time to get a normal job so I started out reselling vintage clothing I found at thrift stores, yard sales, garage sales and estate sales,” Hewitt said. “I’ve been thrifting for years — it’s sustainable, cheaper and you can find some really good stuff.”
She noted that high-waisted jeans and cloth hair clips are just a couple examples of items that have come back into style from years ago.
She launched her Etsy business, Garage Threads, in the middle of the pandemic when people were already gravitating to online sales and she could do her classes and this work from home. Garage Threads is a unisex online apparel store specializing in custom embroidery on hoodies and sweatshirts as well as screen printed T-shirts.
The name of the business reflects the fact that she began the custom embroidery endeavor with automobile logos and themes, which was inspired by her boyfriend, Trevor Crowell, who is studying mechanical engineering at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington. For example, Hewitt has made a number of sweatshirts and hoodies with the logo for Nismo, a high-performance racing vehicle made by Nissan. She has attended car meets with Crowell to sell her products and he helps her with shipping products as he has time while in college.
Nora Hewitt uses two embroidery machines to put logos on sweatshirts and hoodies. {Contributed photo}
Hewitt has two embroidery machines and downloads designs online. She taught herself how to use them by watching YouTube and other how-to videos. Her parents, Credence and Dawn Hewitt, have been supportive and her father even helped her source her sweatshirts.
She just recently started offering screen printed T-shirts that have self-care sayings such as “Be Positive” and “When was the last time you took a little time for yourself?”
Hewitt has been accepted at Cape Fear Community College, where she plans to study psychology, and then transfer to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to study forensic psychology and eventually work in the criminal justice system.
Her interest in this career specialty came from being a major fan of shows like “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Criminal Minds.”
In addition to her apparel business, Hewitt, who has played volleyball since the fourth grade, is a coach with the Champion Volleyball Club in Winston-Salem. “I want to coach when I go to Wilmington, too.” She plans to keep her apparel business going as well. “Even if I get a job, these will be good things to have as a backup.”
