Made on Market

Clothing is the most widely distributed art form on earth and one of the most effective means to move the arts and community forward.

It carries an idea into daily life. People wear it, see it, talk about it, repair it and pass it on. At Holy Stitch! Factory Fellowship, we teach how to make those garments. In the process, we move art through the world while building education, community and pathways to paid work.

Today a generation is being raised that can prompt anything and make nothing.

We are changing that, on a factory floor at 1059 Market Street.

Give by December 31, 2026. Keep the factory teaching.

Artificial Intelligence can draft the design, write the caption and generate the picture of the jean. It cannot cut the denim, set the machine, sew the seam or teach a 16-year-old how it's done and most of all mentor. Skilled people do that—and pass what they know to the next maker.

Made on Market is Holy Stitch! Factory Fellowship's $250,000 campaign to keep our training floor open to young people and take paid apprenticeships from two to six.

Give to Made on Market

If jeans were born here, why aren’t they made here anymore?

San Francisco gave jeans to the world. Yet few young people here get the opportunity to learn how to make them. When manufacturing leaves, machines and jobs go with it. So does the knowledge passed from one maker to another.

We are putting that knowledge back to work. At 1059 Market Street, fellows learn to develop patterns, cut fabric, operate industrial machines, sew and chainstitch, repair garments and finish work to a professional standard. What they make carries their ideas beyond the factory.

The Impact at a Glance

32 young people trained in the last 12 months, from middle school through college
6,000+ community engagements through activations, workshops and classes
42 fellowship seats every year
2 → 6 paid apprenticeships when this campaign is fully funded

What that actually means: 32 young people who can now operate an industrial machine they had never touched-became producers and not just consumers. Thousands of people who watched something get made by hand instead of ordered from a screen. Two young people earning a paycheck for a skill, becoming six. Every one of those numbers is a person with a trade in their hands and a future to look ahead to.

Hands-On in a Hands-Free Culture

That's what this floor is. Real machines, real materials, real mistakes, real mastery. The kind of skill that lives in a person's hands and can't be downloaded, outsourced or automated away. In an economy racing to remove human hands from everything, we are teaching young people to use theirs.

True Sustainability Is People

Fashion measures sustainability in fibers, dyes and carbon. Those things matter. But an industry that forgets how to make things is not sustainable. It is dependent.

Sustainability starts before the product exists. It starts with the person who knows how to cut it, sew it, repair it and make it last.

Every young person who learns to run an industrial machine, finish a garment to professional standards and build a portfolio is a skill that stays in San Francisco. It doesn't wear out. It gets passed on. Fewer and fewer places are passing these skills down. We are.

The most sustainable thing a factory can make is a maker and a career.

Not a Classroom Pretending to Be a Factory. A Factory That Teaches.

1059 Market Street is 3,500 square feet of working factory in Mid-Market: industrial machines, cutting tables, finishing equipment, and real production standards. Fellows don't imagine what a professional workshop looks like. They learn inside one.

What fellows learn:

Safe operation of industrial sewing and denim equipment
Denim and garment construction
Repairs, alterations and customization
Workflow and quality control
Portfolio development
Community and belonging

The path is progression: learner → independent operator → portfolio builder → paid apprentice.

For many young people, access is the first barrier. Industrial machines are expensive, specialized training is rare, and industry networks feel closed. The Fellowship puts the equipment, the instruction, the mentors and the work floor under one roof, open to them.

Where our people went

6 placed with outside employers — four at Levi's, one at Louis Vuitton, one at Empire Records in corporate and the tailor shop
2 hired full-time inside Holy Stitch!, 12 part-time
18 progressed into college

Training that ends at a certificate is a nice experience. These are paychecks and transcripts.

👉 Watch: NBC Bay Area goes inside the factory

From Training to Employment: Partners Wanted

A skill is worth more when it's recognized. We are working to turn this training floor into a credentialed pathway to employment, and we're in active conversation with the California Division of Apprenticeship Standards, through its Partnership Development Branch and its apprenticeship and workforce innovation work, about registering our apprenticeship so what a young person learns here counts everywhere.

We're looking for collaborators to build the rest of that pipeline:

Employers in apparel, manufacturing, retail and repair who will interview or hire our graduates
Brands and factories that will host placements or take on an apprentice
Schools, colleges and workforce agencies that want a hands-on partner for their students
Unions, industry groups and public agencies that can help credential this work

Training that ends at a certificate is a nice experience. Training that ends at a paycheck is a career. If your organization can open that door, write to us at info@holystitch.org.

Why Now - A permanent home.

Since we became a nonprofit in 2023, occupancy support from the Mid-Market Business Association & Foundation has helped the Fellowship build this program on Market Street. We're grateful. That support let us prove the model, and we've grown the number of people we train, work with and serve by more than 200%, and our program revenue by 53%.

Starting January 1, the Fellowship's facility cost rises by $54,000 a year.

Due to significant cuts in federal and state funding, this grant can't be renewed. We are applying for additional grants, and we also need to grow our base of donor support, so that this training floor never again depends on a single source.

We are committing to a long-term home at 1059 Market Street. This campaign funds the first year of that commitment and adds 4 paid apprenticeships.

Three Milestones. One Future.

$80,000 Secure the Training Floor

Keeps the space, instruction, materials and safety in place, along with 42 fellowship seats a year. Nobody loses their seat.

$125,000 Double the Paid Pathway

This campaign supports four additional paid part-time apprenticeships at full funding.

$250,000 Build the School This City Needs

Six paid apprenticeships, a dedicated instructor on the floor, a second cohort every semester, and the equipment to teach them on. This is the number that stops us fundraising to survive and starts us building to grow.

The first milestone protects access. The second turns skill into a paycheck. The third builds something San Francisco doesn't currently have.

Where the $250,000 Goes

$84,000 Four new paid part-time apprenticeships, taking us from two to six
$54,000 Training floor and facility
$36,000 Instruction and mentorship, including a dedicated instructor on the floor
$24,000 Equipment, machine maintenance and safety
$20,000 Denim, thread, hardware, patterns and training supplies
$32,000 Insurance, administration, and the cost of running this campaign

Ask Us a Better Question Than "What's Your Overhead?"

Donors are taught to ask one question: how much of my dollar goes to the cause? It sounds responsible. In practice it asks a nonprofit to stay small.

Here's what that question does to an organization like ours. It says don't pay competitive wages, so the best instructors go elsewhere. Don't advertise, so nobody learns you exist. Don't take risks, because one public failure ends you. Show results this quarter, when training a maker takes years. And never offer investors a return, so the money that scales companies never reaches you.

Every business you admire got to do the opposite. Companies spend on talent, marketing and years of patient growth, and we call it strategy. A nonprofit does the same and we call it waste.

So here is what we'd rather you ask us.

How many young people learn a real trade here, and what happens to them next?
How big is what you're trying to build?
What would you do with more than you asked for?

We will answer all three, in public, with numbers.

What We're Actually Building

Not a program that keeps its costs low. A permanent manufacturing school in the city where jeans were born: a place where a young person walks in with no experience and walks out with an industrial skill, a portfolio, a paycheck and a trade that lasts a lifetime. A floor where San Francisco makes things again, and where the people who make them were trained here.

Two paid apprenticeships is what payroll allows today. Six is what this campaign buys. Six is not the dream either. Six is the proof that this scales.

Why We Spend Money to Raise Money

Part of this budget pays for the campaign: the printing, the event, the outreach, the time it takes to reach people who have never heard of us. We're telling you that on purpose.

A dollar spent reaching a hundred new supporters isn't a dollar taken from a fellow. It's how the next ten fellows get funded. An organization that refuses to invest in its own growth stays exactly the size it is now, forever. We are not trying to be the smallest nonprofit in San Francisco. We're trying to be the one that trains the most makers.

Judge us on that. We'll report the numbers either way.

What Your Gift Does

$50 Denim, thread and hardware for hands-on training
$157 Trains one fellow for one week
$500 Keeps an industrial training station running
$1,750 Funds one month of a paid apprenticeship
$4,500 Keeps the training floor open for one month
$8,153 Trains one fellow for a full year
$21,000 Funds one paid apprenticeship for a year

These examples show what gifts make possible. Unless restricted in writing, funds go where they are most needed within the campaign budget.

Introducing the 501c3 project: Jeans

The Official Jeans of San Francisco.

We could spend all day on why jeans aren't made in San Francisco anymore. The factories that left, the skills that went with them, the city that gave the world its most worn garment and then stopped making it.

We'd rather hand you the proof that it's still possible.

501c3 Jeans are cut, sewn and finished at 1059 Market Street by the people learning to make them. Not a sample. Not a concept. A real pair of jeans, made in San Francisco, in the year everyone says it can't be done here.

A classroom you can wear

Every pair is a semester. The pattern was drafted here. The denim was cut on our tables, sewn on our industrial machines, finished by hands that were shaking the first time they touched an industrial machine and are steady now.

What you're buying is the training itself, in a form you can put on. The stitch a fellow practiced until it was good enough to sell. The quality check a young person learned to run. What happens the first time a stranger pays real money for something you made with your hands.

A community, stitched in

A jean made this way carries everyone who touched it: the fellow at the machine, the apprentice who checked the seams, the instructor who taught the fold, the neighborhood that got activated by us holding space. Wearing it makes you part of that instead of a spectator to it.

Proof of concept, worn in public

Every pair that leaves this factory is evidence: San Francisco can still make things, and the people to do it are already here. They needed a floor, a machine and someone to teach them.

Made in San Francisco at 1059 Market Street, on the training floor, by the people trained on it
Debuting Saturday, October 17 at Open Floor
Small, numbered batches, made to order. No speculative inventory, no waste.
$550 a pair, and $250 of every pair funds training at Holy Stitch! Factory Fellowship

That $250 is more than a week and a half of training for a young maker. Buy the jean, fund the classroom that made it.

Join the 501c3 Jeans waitlist →

The 501c3 Project: Jeans are made and sold by Holy Stitch!, a separate for-profit company. Buying a pair is a purchase, not a tax-deductible donation. Holy Stitch! contributes $250 per pair sold to Holy Stitch! Factory Fellowship. The 501c3 Project: Jeans are not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Levi Strauss & Co. To give a tax-deductible gift, donate on this page.

Open Floor: The 501c3 Jeans Fit Party

Saturday, October 17 · 4–10pm · 1059 Market Street

Come try on the jean that asks the question. Open Floor turns our factory into a fit party for the debut of 501c3 Jeans, and every ticket supports Made on Market.

👖 Try on 501c3 Jeans and get measured by the people who make them
✂️ Reserve a numbered pair from the first batch
🏭 Factory tours led by fellows and apprentices
🎨 Live customization on the factory floor
🎶 DJ, drinks and an auction for Made on Market

Get tickets to Open Floor →

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Proven in San Francisco

The Official Denim Clothier of San Francisco.

🏆 Winner, 2025 San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Community Champion Award
🏛️ Recognized by Daniel Lurie and the San Francisco Mayor's Office
Nominee, SFMade Manufacturer of the Year 2024

We Bring Market Street to Life

Holy Stitch has a proven record of activations that bring people, energy and foot traffic to the places we work, from our factory floor on Mid-Market to Outside Lands and national brand events. 6,000+ people have made, customized and learned with us. Where we set up a floor, the neighborhood comes alive.

Education partners: San Francisco Unified School District · City College of San Francisco · San Francisco State University · Academy of Art University · California College of the Arts

Industry demand: The separate Holy Stitch! manufacturing company has worked with Levi's, GAP, Adidas, Outside Lands, the Exploratorium, Grateful Dead 60th and 36 Chambers / Wu-Tang. Brands at that level want these skills.

In the News

ABC7 Localish: Nonprofit Holy Stitch Factory Fellowship in SF uses sewing to teach life lessons
NBC Bay Area: Holy Stitch, a new denim factory, opens in San Francisco's Mid-Market
San Francisco Standard: San Francisco's Mid-Market new home to sprawling denim studio
CBS News Bay Area / KPIX: Mid-Market clothing designer looks to bring positive energy to San Francisco neighborhood

Also featured in: San Francisco Chronicle · KTVU FOX 2 · NBC California Live · UPROXX · KPFA · Heddels

Our Promise to You

You'll see exactly what your gift built. Supporters get updates on:

Dollars raised and milestones reached
Fellows enrolled and completing each semester
Machine skills and safety sign-offs earned
Portfolio pieces completed
Paid apprenticeships filled and hours funded

Full transparency, on request. We'll share our campaign budget, facility costs and how shared costs are divided between the nonprofit and the for-profit with any donor, partner or funder who asks. Email us.

Where Your Money Goes, Legally

Holy Stitch! Factory Fellowship is a verified 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 92-3934596. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Donations fund the Fellowship's education and workforce programs, paid apprenticeships, and the nonprofit's allocated share of the shared facility. Donations do not fund the separate for-profit Holy Stitch! company's orders, payroll or business expenses. Customer orders are fulfilled by paid staff, never by unpaid fellows.

If you receive goods or event benefits in return for a gift, only the amount above their fair market value is deductible. That value is disclosed on your receipt.

Keep the Factory Teaching.

Help secure the floor where San Francisco's next generation learns to make, repair, build and lead.

Give by December 31, 2026. Every gift counts toward $80,000 first, then $125,000.

holystitch.org · @holystitchfactoryfellowship

Made on Market by Holy Stitch!

Jeans were born in San Francisco. At 1059 Market Street, the next generation is learning to make them.

Fellow Funders