Sew what? : Beowulf Industrial Sewing sees no job too big

There are quite a few items in life you take for granted and seldom stop to think about their origin. For example, when was the last time you stopped and considered who made the awning hanging over a restaurant’s entrance? Or the floor in the yurt you are renting or living in?

Beowulf Industrial Sewing and its founder Kurt Sandiforth are here to change your mind.

Operating out of its Grass Valley industrial location since 2017, Beowulf utilizes its numerous sewing machines to create everything from weatherized outdoor covers to bike bags to upholstery repair.

“It’s a general sewing company but it’s all based on heavy-duty industrial,” Sandiforth said. “There’s plenty of places that will alter clothing, so we are more on the heavy duty side of that. I think we’ve found ourselves a middle ground between the large factories that won’t even look at you unless you have a massive, like 1,000 piece order and we can also handle 30-foot yurts in here.”

Sandiforth began sewing as a young man, as a punk rocker who really just wanted to be able to sew on a patch.

“I always loved making stuff,” he said. “What really started it was hand-sewing…then that led to when I started bike touring, it was making backpacks. That really got me into machine sewing.

“When I first started I had no idea what I was doing. I was going to thrift stores and getting old suitcases and backpacks and cutting those up. I didn’t want to buy fabric and mess it up because I didn’t know what I was doing. So I was repurposing fabric and I just had a cheap sewing machine I got at a thrift store and fell in love with it. I just dove in and started learning about fabrics and threads and machines. I thought it was going to be a bag company. (I’d be) making my own custom bike bags and friends would be like, oh make me one! But I couldn’t make the bags fast enough to be profitable.”

Friends and friends of friends began to chatter about Sandiforth’s abilities on the sewing machine and would often ask him to make or fix something for them. At that point, Sandiforth’s confidence began to bloom.

“I just developed my skills and I felt like I could sew with the best of them,” Sandiforth said. “I went looking for a sewing job and there weren’t any. So I thought maybe this is a great opportunity and so far it has been.”

Sandiforth is proud to report that so far he’s had no business loans and pays everything up front, a rarity in business nowadays, and a far cry from the shoestring budget with which he launched Beowulf.

In his own right, Sandiforth is an experienced traveler. He has traveled by bicycle through 49 countries, and when The Union reported on him in 2009 the writer described the Nevada City native as “a connoisseur of life in motion.”

“When I was 16 or something I found myself living in the bushes, and I always knew I was going to go somewhere,” he said. “I hitchhiked all over the place and I hopped trains for quite a while, mostly through the beginning of the ‘90s. Then I got tired of the hassle of trains and then was living in Gainesville, Florida and I met some kids who wanted to start a bicycle collective.

“It definitely gave me a good bit of courage to dive in and start a business. Having a family and a mortgage, it’s really scary to take that leap. But I did it for them. With all my years being a traveler I don’t have a 401K. I didn’t have anything set aside for them so it was like well, now that I have beings I am responsible for I want to give them something later in their life. (Traveling) gave me the audacity to throw myself into something and make it work.”

Sandiforth’s entrepreneurial spirit has lent him not just a living but a passion for what he does and how he does it. Now he sees a chance to help out other companies while exercising his skill and ability—in addition to five employees, Beowulf also relies heavily on the numerous sewing machines that line the shop, all with different capabilities.

“We’re working with a bunch of startups who want to order maybe 50 of something, not 1,000,” said Sandiforth. “That being said, we are doing a lot of outdoor covers. We are doing tenting. We’re doing upholstery. We’re doing awnings. So much different stuff comes in the door. Sometimes I just do repairs. We also do mostly commercial sewing for other companies. We are doing four different yurt companies right now; three different camper companies.

“That’s where we are at in this stage of things. I really like contract work. Then we are also in the phase of trying to launch our own products. Things and ideas that I have that I would like to make and sew.”

For more information on Beowulf Industrial Sewing, please visit www.beowulfsewing.com or call 530-648-0481.

Staff Writer Jennifer Nobles can be reached at [email protected].

Live scanner feed here:Your browser does not support iFrames.