In-Depth with Golightly Cashmere: Classic cashmere pieces are crafted to last a lifetime

A cap, a magazine ad and the need to make a living — that’s how it began.

Now Haleigh Palmer’s New Mexico-based company, Golightly Cashmere, consists of three brick-and-mortar stores and an online presence featuring over 40 cashmere designs and a line of fine chocolate.

The company’s classic cashmere pieces are crafted to last a lifetime, according to its website.

“We’re not going for how to make it as cheap as possible,” Palmer told the Albuquerque Journal. “We’re really just going for how good we can make it.”

Nearly two decades ago, as a part-time English composition instructor at the University of New Mexico Taos and a single mother with an entrepreneurial streak, Palmer was looking for a way to sustain her young family of two. She created a cashmere wool watch cap with a vintage knitting machine and advertised it in The New Yorker magazine in 2004. Orders came in by phone and a business was born.

“I was so grateful because I wasn’t making it and then I was able to have a stable business at that point,” Palmer said.

In the beginning, she knit each item — mostly hats but also scarves, ponchos and other accessories — herself. Slowly she was able to train others, which gave her eyes and body a bit of a break from the physical demands of the profession.

Then in 2012, Palmer teamed up with chocolatiers to open a retail store — aptly named chocolate + cashmere — on the Taos Plaza. It features the luxurious pairing of fine wool and artisan bonbons. Since then she’s opened two stores in Santa Fe and begun concocting their chocolate confections in-house. Today the company headquarters are in Santa Fe where both the knitted merchandise and the chocolate candy, still made in small batches, is created in Golightly Cashmere’s 6,000-square-foot facility.

While shops are a great way for customers to get to see and touch the woolen merchandise before buying it, Palmer said she’s not sure the company’s values and ethics are always apparent.

“It relies on the salesperson to express that (in the stores),” she said. “Whereas on the website we can be pretty transparent about our practices.”

After returning this spring from a visit to the goat herds and cashmere processing facilities of Mongolia, Palmer is working with her team to increase their digital marketing. They aim to grow, not by offering ever-changing styles and products, but by expanding the customer base for the products they’ve already designed.

“We make really good products and we just want more people to know about the cashmere watch cap … that’s what we’re focused on.”

What is go lightly in Golightly Cashmere a reference to?

“Originally it’s from Truman Capote’s novella ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and my literary background. Just to pay homage. But also like the concept of go lightly with the world, go lightly on yourself, go lightly on the Earth. So it does encompass a philosophy that I believe in.”

Your yarn, your cashmere, comes from Scotland or Italy but that’s not where it’s grown. Why is that?

“Because the Scots and the Italians invented the process of turning it from a raw fiber into a knittable yarn. The raw cashmere is exported to Scotland or Italy where they do the spinning and dyeing. They have the technology. That’s one thing Mongolia doesn’t have yet. China does, but China’s practices are not transparent so it’s not great to buy Chinese cashmere for that reason.”

What does Golightly Cashmere do to be transparent?

“This trip to Mongolia really helps us with that because I felt a little blind just receiving yarn from Scotland in the mail but not knowing the history behind it. So we’re going to start telling people, and creating a direct link with the goats and the herders, all the things that are happening. We’ll start being more transparent on our website. We do offer a lifetime guarantee already. So that says that we stand by whatever we make. You invest in this product for life, is the idea. It’s not supposed to be disposable.”

How often do you come out with a new product or new design?

“We haven’t made that many new things. It’s fast fashion if you’re always trying to make new stuff. So we kind of just try to really have integrity in the things we make but then expand our customer base.”

Why is fast fashion and disposable cashmere a problem?

“Well, simply put, it’s unsustainable. There’s a cost that’s greater than we can even see. Even the most conscientious person can have a hard time finding out what the true cost is. But you can basically be assured if it’s meant to just last for the season, it didn’t consider all of the resources being used and all the energy and effort and everything behind it.”

You offer cashmere care for life. What does it cost the company to have items cleaned and mended?

“We haven’t measured that yet. I don’t know. But we often feel so happy when they come in the mail and we get to see how they’re holding up. So for the most part, people don’t take advantage of it. And a lot of it is education. So it’s like ‘Hey, you have a moth problem. Here’s a moth trap.’ ‘Here’s the way you store it.’ ‘This is a better way to take care of it.’ It’s establishing a longer term relationship with our customers as opposed to never seeing or hearing from them again. We like it. We like to see how it’s doing.”

When you look back at the company’s history, what makes you proud?

“I’m so proud that it’s still moving forward. And that it sustains me and that it gives me a life that I’m grateful for. And I’m also really proud of the products. When I see friends in town that have some of my original things, it’s so fun. Or strangers at the grocery store, when I see them wearing a poncho. … I’m proud of the product. I’m proud when I see it doing what it’s supposed to do, which is last for a lifetime.”

Business Outlook’s In-Depth item features interviews with leaders of well-established New Mexico businesses about the practices that have allowed them to weather ups and downs. Send suggestions of locally owned businesses that have been in existence for at least a decade and that employ at least 20 people to jleacock@abqjournal.com for consideration.