David and Clare Hieatt founded Hiut Denim Co. in 2012 specifically to bring jeans manufacturing back to Cardigan, the small West Wales town that had been home to Britain's largest jeans factory (making 35,000 pairs a week for nearly four decades) until it closed in 2001 and put 400 people out of work. The name combines the first letters of their surname with "ut," for utility. Their stated goal was to re-employ the town's "Grand Masters," the skilled machinists left without work after the closure, rather than simply start a new factory with new hires.