The Hohgant Story

Everything started with a strawberry . . .

For over thirty years, newborn babies among our family and friends got strawberry hats as a gift.

One day a friend, who runs two exclusive art and design boutiques, asked me if I could deliver the strawberry hats to their boutiques. Soon after the first items were displayed, they were quickly sold and further orders followed ...

Day by day, I received more orders until finally I could no longer fullfill all the requests. My friend Susanna, from the well-known Emmental Region (the place where the Emmental-Cheese is made) offered to help me with knitting. But soon we both couldn’t handle all the orders. We required additional help, which we received by my friend‘s mother, sister, daughter, a sister-in-law, as well as some neighbours. Almost overnight, our kniting team expanded to a dozen knitting women.

Our hard-working crew had a lot of fun. We produced 184 strawberry hats during the first few months. We soon got new inquires for knitting other items – like sweaters for infants and young children.

I never intended to start a professional knitting production, but I had experience in design. I was a designer for 15 years in the fashion department of the School of Design in Basel (Switzerland) and led many young people in their first steps in the fashion industry.

As a designer, mother and grandmother of many, I often dealt with children's clothing, and had many design ideas defined and collected. An important source of inspiration for clothe ideas was the photograph series «mountain kids 1944/45» by Emil Brunner (1908 1995).

It was always my interest to create a children's collection that would develop the aesthetics, functionality, material and processing quality of yesterday in combination with modern, child-friendly comfort of today. Today's design should also be coupled with environmentally friendly materials and production criteria, as well as sustainable action. Innovative marketing, communications and sales practice should be tested, and the fair wage policy should be implemented.

Three generations of our family were involved in the realization of the project «Hohgant»: Grandmother, daughter and seven grandchildren. I am the grandmother, as well as the manager of design, production, organization and product communications with suppliers, knitters and responsible businesses. My daughter, Alexa is responsible for public relations, corporate identity and public appearance and is an essential conversation partner. The seven grandchildren and grandchildren inspire us every day (and keep us at the same time successfully in business!).

We grew over a short period of time to become a small company. And the growth continues. Meanwhile we have established business relations with well-known and exclusive retail outlets in Basel, Zurich (Switzerland), Hamburg, Munich, Berlin (Germany), Copenhagen (Denmark), Vienna (Austria), Tokyo (Japan), Los Angeles and now our newest partner Eurostyle Your Life in Fremont (Seattle) USA.

Our knitting team has increased to 180 people, who are producing the unique and exclusive «Hohgant» knitware for Children.

Besides the joy of each finished piece of knitting and the success of our collection, one of the greatest gift has been the encounter with the people from the Emmental Valley – from hill to hill, those wonderful and beautiful places, in villages, towns and lonely individual courtyards. I was always very welcome with the «Hohgant» Project.

Only after a certain time have I become aware of what the main issue of the project should be: I had completely underestimated the personal, social and economic potential of the ancient cultural technique of knitting, and the place it has as a self-earning ability and secondary source in the lives of many, mostly non-working women, who usually get never paid for their own work.

The many knitters working in the project earn a real salary, which covers the costs of daily living.

However, since the project staff is gathered for more than just profit, they are also able to share in a sense of the Hohgant-community. This is witnessed to by the many letters, phone calls and invitations that we receive.

The first time that an older knitter received compensation for her work, she had to wipe the tears from her eyes and said, „I've never received money for knitting.“

Hannah Liatowitsch Strøm
Pfaffenmoos, Eggiwil, 17 February 2008