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Nov 12, 2024

Sausalito businesswoman makes handbags from old sailcloth - The North Bay Business Journal

A Sausalito entrepreneur rescues old sails destined for the landfill. After seven years at sea on a 40-foot sailboat, Sausalito entrepreneur Emma Casey has learned a thing or two about resilience and

A Sausalito entrepreneur rescues old sails destined for the landfill.

After seven years at sea on a 40-foot sailboat, Sausalito entrepreneur Emma Casey has learned a thing or two about resilience and finding ways to make things work. It’s a characteristic she leans on as she builds Landfall Leatherworks, her business that sells handbags and accessories made from old sailcloth.

Casey, 30, designs and makes the handbags herself, each with leather handles and trim.

“When I was a kid, my dad had an industrial sewing machine in the house, so he taught me how to work with leather,” Casey said, adding her parents also were entrepreneurs. “I wasn't working with sailcloth, but I would make leather bags and I started doing that for my friends.”

At sea, she learned to make ditty bags, or small travel bags, out of scraps of sailcloth.

“But I altered it and made it my own and made it a backpack,” Casey said. “It was all hand-stitched and with some traditional marlinespike seamanship, which requires making your own grommets out of rope and all this sort of splicing and knot work. It was very elaborate in some ways.”

Casey’s choice to live on a sailboat for seven years wasn’t arbitrary. When she was in fourth grade, she spent a year living on a boat in Mexico with her parents.

“There is a whole community of people that live on sailboats, travel on sailboats and call sailboats home in a way that a lot of people aren't aware of,” Casey said.

But after several years at sea, Casey said she became restless and started thinking about her future.

Casey launched Landfall Leatherworks in February 2023. Her products are made from sailcloth no longer viable for use and headed for the landfill.

“Sailcloth is a really phenomenal material that's lightweight, durable, water resistant, very strong,” Casey said. “It withstands a lot out in the elements on boats, contending with sun and wind and water, and they eventually get thrown away.”

Casey also repurposes sails from racers.

“Sometimes I get sails donated that seem to have nothing wrong with them. They maybe just lost their shape a tiny bit,” Casey said. “There's no system in place for recycling them (because) they’re synthetic. Way back in the day, sails were all made from cotton and hemp, but those days are pretty long gone. So now they're all polyester and non-recyclable, nonbiodegradable.”

Landfall Leatherworks also sells zip pouches, logo hats and pencil cases. Prices for handbags start at $215, and at $35 for accessories.

In its first year of business, Landfall Leatherworks’ revenue was $30,000 and had a profit of $20,000, Casey said.

Casey works in a building that is part of Sausalito’s Marinship, which houses The Canvas Works, a boat cover supplier once owned by her father.

“I did not need to rent my own workshop and I have use of sewing machines,” Casey said. “My dad had a bunch of leatherworking tools and a lot of the tools required.” The person who bought the store continues to let Casey work there at no cost.

Between that setup and having sails donated through her connections, Casey’s input costs have been minimal. She invested $1,300 of her own money to start the business.

Casey’s entrepreneurial parents are now-retired geologists who owned several businesses over the years, according to her mom, Lisa Whitaker.

“I think Emma could see the advantages of not working for someone else,” Whitaker said. “I have a really hard time ever picturing her in a nine-to-five cubicle.”

Whitaker described her daughter as an independent thinker who has always been confident, “even as a little kid.”

But Casey admits she was somewhat naive when she dove into entrepreneurship.

“I think I had unrealistic expectations about what running a business by yourself was like,” she said.

However, over the last 18 months, she has a “better grasp of reality” as she builds her business acumen.

Casey meets regularly with an adviser through the Women’s Business Center, a federally funded program of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The program helps women succeed in business by providing training, mentoring, business development and more.

Casey sells her wares a few ways, including through her website, which she created herself. She uses Instagram as her social media platform, and participates in craft fairs and other events.

Last year, Casey attended a fall fashion show at a local yacht club, which was good for sales and also helped define her niche customer: wealthy women who are environmentally conscious and looking for something unique, she said.

“What I’m working on now is expanding (the wholesale) part of my business,” Casey said, noting that means her normal cut will be about 50%. “It changes my margins a lot, but the shops are doing the marketing and finding the customer.”

During her sailing years, Casey spent summers in Alaska working as a chef in a high-end fishing lodge. She also still cooks sometimes at her friend’s pizzeria shop in Marin County.

“I've always enjoyed work that is very tangible, and cooking was the same way,” she said. “You have a physical result of your labor for people to enjoy and it involves creativity and art.”

In 2019, while working at the fishing lodge in Alaska, Casey met Nene Burns, an entrepreneur with her own executive coaching business. The two became friends.

Burns has informally coached Casey throughout the years, she said, and sees her as being built for success.

“She catches on to things quickly because she is a multidimensional thinker,” Burns said. “That’s one of the biggest things I see for leaders that’s missing is this multidimensionality in their thinking. A lot of people think in black and white.”

Burns also reminds Casey that just being an entrepreneur is hard.

“I've been in business for 20-odd years, and I still struggle with half the stuff she struggles with,” Burns said. “It's hard working for yourself.”

Casey also knows she has competition in her line of business. That includes Sea Bags of Maine, a large operation. But, like Casey, Sea Bags also got its start as a tiny company.

“Aesthetically, I think my (handbags) are quite different, just the design side of it,” Casey said. “There's room for competition, of course. And there’s really an endless stream of this material heading to the dump.”

Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care, aviation and employment. Reach her at [email protected] or 707-521-4259.