My How We’ve Grown

When I started Cedar and Pearl only a few years ago, I was working out of my home studio and completely on my own. From conception and design, to painting and assembly, to outreach, sales, and shipping - it was a one woman show. With hard work and dedication, my business expanded quickly and I needed more space and help!

As I brought on my first employees, I serendipitously found a space in The Shirt Factory that became our new home. It was perfect timing. The Workshop, as I nicknamed it, became available exactly when I needed more room to operate my business and gave me somewhere to put my newly purchased laser cutters (which are amazing, but big and bulky, and showed up quicker than expected). My new landlords at the Shirt Factory, Eric and Billie Jean, were so accommodating and helped make my move quick and effortless - something for which I will be forever grateful.

The Shirt Factory is such a special place and a real historical gem in Glens Falls. The building itself echoes the stories from its centuries-old industrial past. My own grandmother and her sisters-in-law worked as seamstresses in the building when it operated as an actual shirt factory. This personal connection made it even more of an honor to be a part of the now revitalized space. We hung my grandmother’s scissors in The Workshop as a tribute to my family and the many other women who created in the space before us.

As we settled in, we made it our own and became a part of the community of artists and makers that also call The Shirt Factory home. At 800 sqft, the space felt gigantic compared to my home studio. It nicely fit our 3 laser machines (named Maude, Mabel, and Blanche - since they’re hard working ladies too), a handful of employees and their desks, our inventory, and even a small but beautiful retail space.

Fast forward through 3 years of steady business growth to 2024 and things started feeling a bit…cozy! To keep up with demand we’ve hired more staff and tend to run all three machines daily. Temporary work stations became permanent desks and inventory was overflowing on wall to wall, floor to ceiling (well, floor to as high as us shorties can reach) shelves. We began to realize that to continue to grow, once again we needed more room. 

We knew matching the magical feeling of The Shirt Factory would be a tall order. A new space would need to be bigger of course and functional for our business, but also warm and welcoming. Many of our sugar motivated elf-like employees were also hoping for something bakery-adjacent. How would we find something that just felt right? Well, once again, like it was fated, an available 2300 sqft space in a building right across the street was mentioned in casual conversation. Within days we had toured it, fallen in love, and signed a lease to move in at the beginning of the new year!

It’s been quite the whirlwind. The Workshop in The Shirt Factory will always be a home for us and we adore it so much we will be keeping it as a retail space in addition to our new production facility. Really, both the old Workshop and new are pure magic - and we’re so very happy to have the best of both worlds as we enter what will hopefully be our biggest and best year yet.

The new space is so beautiful in its own right that I can’t wait to give you all a virtual tour - so check back in soon!