Nisha Blackwell

Interview By Justin Brown

1. The first thing I have to ask: Why bowties? Don’t get me wrong, I think that they’re great, but it still seems like a very niche market.

It is a niche market, and we also get so many people ask that same question: “what is so special about bow ties?” I actually stumbled into entrepreneurship back in 2014. I made a gift for a friend’s daughter and it was a hairbow, and the hairbows kind of took off, and supported me over the summer time. Then I started getting parents ask for items for boys, and so it kind of naturally progressed into this, like, “okay what can I make for boys?”

A friend of mine who actually co-owns a boutique with two other women, called Make Matter. She one day was like “it’d be cool if you made little bowties.” I kinda took the market’s requests, and my friend’s great idea, and kind of combined the two. I said okay now I’m going to decide to pivot and do research and really understand what is a really great bow tie. And in that, we create handmade bow ties that are reclaimed and repurposed fabrics and material. So that is the niche-within-the-niche, like okay bowties but then you make them out of reclaimed and repurposed materials, which is attractive to a whole different customer base.

2. There is a video on your website, sort of a short bio sketch for yourself and your company, and it mentions that you went from working at a coffee shop to pay bills to getting laid off and then making the dive into entrepreneurship. Going from working paycheck-to paycheck to getting laid off can be very scary for a lot of people. Can you sort of elaborate on how he made that transition and felt during that transition?

So going from being laid off to kind of figuring it out was natural, because it wasn’t the first time being laid off. I was laid off a couple times in my 20, unfortunately. Every time you have to kind of have to bounce back. But this time the bounce back was different. It was this idea that I had made the product for a friend’s daughter, and so I had something that I was making money off of. Once [I got] the news of the company, you know not being able to keep me—I felt like “okay now I can follow this, I don’t have any choice but to follow if full-force.”

Knotzland really encompasses like me in my 20s working at different companies and seeing things that bosses did really good and things that bosses and leadership did really bad, and kind of like figuring out like where that middleground is. So I’ve always— I’ve thought about “oh, if I were a manager, I’d do it this way.” Well now I’m running a small business, and I have the opportunity to really apply some of those core things I think a lot of people in our age group are interested in, like sustainability, like community impact and such.

“I have the opportunity to really apply some of those core things I think a lot of people in our age group are interested in, like sustainability, like community impact and such.”

3. Another thing I had a question about, which was mentioned on your website, was skill sharing. Do you have a skill sharing program? Could you sort of elaborate on whom that is for? How does it work? How do people enroll?

So we have a seamstress community in which we recruit, train and rehire local women. Basically for them to help us make products, and they make products generally from home. Our parts and pieces are done from the flexibility of someone’s home. What we do— we’ve had a seamstress here for a very long time and she now retrains. We also have our coordinator, who has been a seamstress for very long time, but she has moved up to help more with the operations and production. She trains our seamstresses, and so we the community right now of 15 women we taught how to sew. If you’re like a rockstar sewer, and you want to come and teach someone how to sew, you can feel free to do so. Moving into a new space allows us to have more, because we were in a shared space before and had to be respectful of our neighbors. Here, we can just make more noise, use more machines and kind of really get that seamstress community going in a way that I see can only benefit like our economy, and our local economy.

4. Talking about you know activism, social justice and marginalization, a lot of the people that you collaborate with work within those areas. Tereneh Idia is an internationally renowned fashion designer, she is also known for ecosustainable fashion and has done collaborations with indigenous women in Kenya. There’s Darrell Kinzel, he is a Pittsburgh artist and activist on the board of Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse and cofounder of Community Arts and Entrepreneurship organization. Bekezela Mgnuni, is a radical librarian, and artist activist who created the Black Unicorn Library, which is an archive of black women and LGBTQA+ women’s stories. Can you first tell me a little bit about how each of these collaborations came to be and what were created out of them?

So full disclaimer: they’re all my friends and family. When I came back to Pittsburgh from college, I didn’t decide that I wanted to be an entrepreneur or be an activist. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But, one thing that’s always been with me is social justice, and kind of like figuring out where I fit in that community.

A friend of mine had taken me to Boom Concepts to see a film presented by another now friend of mine, Njaimeh Njie, and that really sparked the relationship of Darrell and I. Darrell and I have collaborated numerous times. I really respect his work and his work ethic. He’s always been extremely supportive of Knotzland, so it was just kind of a given that we collaborate. He was one of the first people I was like “hey, can I make bow ties with your work?” And he said sure, and it was his magical collaboration. Every time we have collaborated there’s this raw consistency of everything Darrell is. I can’t even think of how to put it in any terms other than he’s like this magnificent person. He is always really supportive, like a brother.

Tereneh is another person I just met in the scene. I think being creative of color you’re constantly trying to find your people. And so Darrell, Tereneh, Bekezela and Njaimeh all grew out of me kind of going into the spaces where other creators of color were, where people who are successful and and moving in the city. You almost have to dig, which is unfortunate, in a city like Pittsburgh that highlights itself on so many different stages. But, you kinda’ have to dig for the people of color because they’re not really supported and uplifted much as others.

So, I just return any type of love to them. They’ve all been really really supportive of my work. Tereneh’s and my collaboration happened over a year, over the course of which she took pieces to Olorgesailie [Kenya], had local ladies do the beadwork on the pieces, and brought them back to me and we made them into bow ties. It was a very successful collection, and it was natural that we collaborate because we are both in the sustainable space. It was this beauty, like, there were three different communities; she bridged this community of this black girl in Pittsburgh and the women in Kenya. It was just these beautiful communities of color. She [Tereneh] works with other communities of color, not just in Kenya but all over the place.

With Bekezela, we collaborated on the collection very early on. She was also one of my first collaborations even before Tereneh, in which we collaborated on symbolism for Black History Month. She screen printed some amazing symbols of traditional, meaningful symbols around Black History Month.

5. So as of right now people want to check out what you have to offer, or if they want something custom-made, where can they go?

You can go to Knotzland.com where you can reach out directly through a form on the page. there’s a “Contact Us,” and you can reach out to us and let us know what you want!