Back to the Basics: Sussex Fibre Mill Focuses on Local Quality
SUSSEX–Coming from a farming family, sisters Amy Carpenter Tonning and Alyson Brown have woven their skills and passions together to build Legacy Lane Fiber Mill, a processing mill and retail location that serves alpaca farmers and sells yarn and felt online, across Canada and in the US.
Ten years ago, after Carpenter Tonning and Brown graduated from college, they searched for a way to incorporate the farming lifestyle they’d grown up with and the passions they’d developed to make a living for themselves and contribute to the local economy.
“Originally we come from farming families so we were looking into alpacas because it was a new livestock that was being talked about a lot,” Carpenter Tonning said.
At that time, using alpaca fibre was a relatively new idea and the sisters considered starting an alpaca farm of their own. They soon realized there were few mills around where the fibre could be processed from its raw state into usable yarn and felt.
With this need in mind, they decided to start a fibre mill of their own to fulfill both their needs and the needs of alpaca owners in the Maritimes and beyond.
Carpenter Tonning says she and her sister had always discussed starting a business together.
“The reason it started was we had hoped to do something in the hamlet we grew up in, something that related to how we were brought up and how we would like to live,” she said. “We’ve always been really close. We share a lot of the same visions. We’re not especially alike but we like the same outcomes. We grew up in a very tight community in a tight family where we just always were working together … It just seemed natural.”
In 2005, to get their idea off the ground, the sisters came up with a business plan and presented it to NBIF for consideration for their competition which awarded prizes to students graduating from New Brunswick colleges and universities with innovative business ideas.
After being awarded the first prize of $25,000, Carpenter Tonning and Brown got into the nitty gritty of buying machinery, setting up shop and starting their own fibre mill.
“We wrote our business plan based on opening and operating a mini mill to process alpaca,” Carpenter Tonning said. “While it wasn’t especially innovative to the rest of Canada and we weren’t inventing anything, we were developing an industry here in New Brunswick and it was innovative to our province, which is how we sold it.”
Legacy Lane has made a name for themselves across the country and beyond with alpaca breeders for the quality of their product. They’ve also built a reputation with customers who buy their felt and yarn as a business focused on sustainability and staying local.
“People are recognizing that by purchasing our yarns, you’re supporting families here. You’re supporting women in business and you’re supporting a community,” Carpenter Tonning said. “Each skein of yarn has a life and our yarns have a story.”
While money is needed to pay the bills and keep things running, Legacy Lane is driven more by a common desire to reflect the community the sisters were raised in. Carpenter Tonning says that passion and their support for each other was what helped them succeed.
“I think that it gives us more to fight for. There are times that it hasn’t been easy getting the business started like this and growing but I think that a lot of times we stayed in it and we fought for it because we were also fighting for each other,” she said. “It makes us stronger and the people we work with who are here now are often the same types of people.”
The sisters faced challenges throughout their growth not only when it came to the unforeseen details of establishing and running a fibre mill, but with how they were perceived in the business community as well.
“There was often a lot of doubt because we were very young and we were women. There’s obviously a lot of mechanical work and a lot of getting dirty. It’s a dirty job, it’s hard work. For us to find out way on how to navigate this type of business we had to learn a lot of trades or skills we might not have previously known.”
“I think all of us women really work well together. I think it makes us stronger. We like being tough and kicking butt.”
Carpenter Tonning and Brown take pride not only in the sense of community they’ve built but also the products they produce through the sustainable processing of fibre.
“Our products are high quality and the methods we practice are with the greater good in mind,” Carpenter Tonning said. “The reason we do what we do is because we do believe that we are helping an alternative industry in Canada and we are helping our province by helping to develop and further the textile industry”
Carpenter Tonning believes that in light of the collapse of traditional industries in New Brunswick, most notably the PotashCorp mine closure near Sussex, it’s now the time to think outside tradition and find new ways to do business.
“The province is poised to take on new industries and new ways of making a living and I think that by us already having accomplished what we have so far, it can give the message to young people that … it is possible to break open new industries in this province.”
As a business fulfilling the ever-growing demand for high quality, locally processed materials, the future looks bright for Legacy Lane. Carpenter Tonning and Brown hope to expand their sales, improve on existing processes and continue to encourage the next generation to take a chance on less explored industries.