Ted De Innocentis (left) and Josh Walker of Haverhill-based apparel company 1620 Workwear. (Courtesy photograph)
Haverhill’s downtown business district has a new neighbor. Apparel entrepreneurs Josh Walker and Ted De Innocentis recently relocated their clothing line 1620 Workwear to Wingate Street and have been using their Haverhill HQ to facilitate much of the production on their U.S.-made brand.
As Andover’s De Innocentis tells WHAV, Haverhill stood out for its desire to foster the creativity of startups like 1620. During early meetings with the city economic and planning office, De Innocentis said he was welcomed with open arms.
“We also met with Lawrence early on before we met with Haverhill, but they weren’t really talking about jobs—they were about changing the stigma,” he told WHAV. “With Haverhill, it was about ‘How can we get you here and scale you up so you can start making stuff here and creating jobs?’ That was refreshing and a really big selling point for us.”
Prior to starting 1620, Walker cofounded the BERN line of ski and snowboard helmets, while De Innocentis lived in China and managed product development in a garment factory. It is that experience coupled with high-performance, proprietary fabric that put the brand on the map.
“We’re selling a product that’s significantly higher in performance than the current workwear options. It’s not necessarily about making people spend more money, it’s about spending their money on products that are going to benefit their daily life,” De Innocentis tells WHAV, acknowledging that the brand’s price point of $98 and up could come as a sticker shock.
Settling into their downtown digs in June, Walker and De Innocentis have leaned on other local businesses to help their brand stand out. In addition to using a city graphic designer, the men have hired a local seamstress to do repairs and alterations.
As a result, Walker says their big competitors are taking notice of the small apparel brand from Haverhill.
“We’re a startup now and we’re scrappy, and we’re trying to really shake up the category—and we have. We’ve definitely disrupted the category,” he said. “All of the big competitors, whether it’s Dickies or Carhartt or Duluth are paying attention to what we’re doing and we’re hoping to get in front of them before they copy us too much.”
For more information on 1620 Workwear, email [email protected].