First Nations Clothing finds overseas markets

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Three years ago their office was the trunk of a car.

Today, the demand for First Nations clothing is coming from all over North America and as far away as Europe.

Lorissa Muth and Diane Semenchuk founded the company and designed the line of modern clothing with Native motifs and designs. The line includes leather jackets, sweat shirts, T-shirts, jeans wear, sports wear, jewelry, accessories and a line of pewter and bronze statues.

First Nations Clothing does custom design orders, and is branching out into a higher end fashion of modern style dresses with Native motifs.

They began by selling the jackets at powwows, and their market grew through word of mouth. After only one year in business, the company's sales were $118,000. After the first year, they started getting requests for custom sales from all over the United State and from Europe as well.

Business has been so good that First Nations Clothing is expecting sales to reach $5 million after five years in business.

But the company is about more than making a profit, says Muth.

"There's been nothing available to our people in terms of quality clothing. We wanted to put together something that was Canadian made, no imports. When someone wears these clothes, it shows Native pride."

That Native pride is also in demand from Europeans, as Ken Roulette, director of a Winnipeg Native theatre group, Prairie Buffalo Theatre, discovered last summer.

The group performed at a western theme park in Hillerstorrpe, Sweden, for two months. The Swede's interest in the First Nations Clothing the actors wore gave Roulette an idea. Upon returning to Winnipeg, he joined forces with First Nations Clothing to become their Swedish connection. He is returning in May with merchandise to sell at the theme park and will go back to perform with Prairie Buffalo this summer.

Roulette is also hoping to set up a retail outlet for the company by the fall of this year, because while the clothes and statues can be found in Hudson's Bay, The North-West company and various specialty stores across the country, First Nations Clothing has no retail outlet of its own, being primarily in wholesale.

While the company has taken off in a few short years, its success ha not been achieved without obstacles.

"It was very difficult to establish credibility with the banks. Being women, they wanted our husbands to co-sign a loan. I told them to get out," says the mild-mannered Muth.

Finally, after finding a bank willing to take the initial risk, the company is now looking for private investment.

"We're looking to private investors because we're at a limit right now. We're trying to expand for our own training development and production line" says Muth.

John Lee, a partner in the company, acknowledges that there are federal loans available to Aboriginal businesses, but says that they are difficult to access and that they give government more control than First Nations Clothing would feel comfortable with.

For now though, the biggest challenge for the company is trying to keep up with an increasing demand from both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. Muth estimates that 40 per cent of the sales are to non-Aboriginals, and says that that percentage should continue to swell once the merchandise begins to sell in Sweden.