Sewing business

Moving where?

STT sorry about that

This is one of the reasons people recommend that you work in your field before starting a new business here. You might want to contact the woman at Lagnappe. She started by doing custom window treatments, etc. I'm sure there are people who sew, but are is it up to your standards?

I'm willing to train the right people and at least employee more people on the island. I've ran the company with my husband for 4 years stateside so we can manage it ourselves but I would love to get some help eventually. We're lucky enough where we can really bring it anywhere. I just haven't been able to find any places that sell machines down there

K-Mart has sewing machines.As I said, this is something you will need to research, as it is a niche business.

If you are looking for commercial machines you may simply need to have them shipped down via a freight forwarding company. Not that big a deal. What may be a bigger concern is service and repair. I'd guess consumer machines would not hold up for use in a business.

My husband actually repairs and main twins them, thankfully. Small consumer ones should work for a little bit at least until we figure out a space to ship the larger ones. Thanks for your help.

there are thousands of well built durable commercial older sewing machines available in almost any major former garment district manufacturing area across the USA. Although many were shipped overseas with the jobs they are still not hard to find especially in the NE cities.
Shipping them to the USVI is fairly simple - they are mostly Made in the USA so there will be no duty from Customs.
It would be a great boon to the economy to have some manufacturing businesses on island if you can do it here profitably - there are a few hurdles to overcome on that front I would guess.

If you are willing to train, maybe you could take a look at My Brother's Workshop. It's sad that so many of the home economic and industrial arts have been taken out of the schools. I have been sewing since I was a little girl. I don't have much time for it now! But I still enjoy it when I can find the time for it. I've been roped into a handful of sewing jobs over the years here just because there aren't that many people who know how to do it well and at an affordable rate.

There are a few seamstresses and fabric stores on St Thomas. Nayda (can't remember her last name) teaches sewing classes and has a line of beachwear. She's on facebook.

The public school children wear uniforms so there was a demand for seamstresses to make the uniforms.

What about all those costumes for Carnival and all the other holiday parades. They're surely locally made.

Also school uniforms.

I believe she has discovered What's Going on St Thomas.

I don't know of any machine dealers here and certainly no industrial machines. Any machine available at Kmart is likely the very lowest end. Not suitable for commercial sewing.