She makes soft leather shoes for infants | Lifestyle | eagletribune.com – Eagle-Tribune
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Updated: January 23, 2022 @ 7:35 am
North Andover, Massachusetts
Charlotte Arivella at home in Haverhill where she hand makes leather baby shoes among other products for young children.
Charlotte Arivella makes bow ties for babies among other products.
Charlotte Arivella of Haverhill hand makes leather baby shoes, booties, bows, bow ties, and masks for children. Arivella sells them online from home at www.histlensage.com.
Charlotte Arivella at her workshop in Haverhill, where she makes leather baby shoes, booties, bows, bow ties, and masks for children.
A pair of hand-made leather shoes that Charlotte Arivella creates in her Haverhill home workshop.
Charlotte Arivella works on one of her products at home.
Charlotte Arivella of Haverhill holds some of the different styles of leather shoes she makes for baby boys and girls.
Charlotte Arivella at home in Haverhill where she hand makes leather baby shoes among other products for young children.
Charlotte Arivella makes bow ties for babies among other products.
Charlotte Arivella of Haverhill hand makes leather baby shoes, booties, bows, bow ties, and masks for children. Arivella sells them online from home at www.histlensage.com.
Charlotte Arivella at her workshop in Haverhill, where she makes leather baby shoes, booties, bows, bow ties, and masks for children.
A pair of hand-made leather shoes that Charlotte Arivella creates in her Haverhill home workshop.
Charlotte Arivella works on one of her products at home.
Charlotte Arivella of Haverhill holds some of the different styles of leather shoes she makes for baby boys and girls.
HAVERHILL — Haverhill was once a thriving manufacturing center for women’s shoes, earning it the nickname “Queen Slipper City.”
For nearly 150 years, the shoe industry kept downtown buildings buzzing, put food on the tables of local families, and made the captains of local industry wealthy.
Although no one expects a return of those bygone days, one woman is looking to put Haverhill back on the shoemaking map, one small footstep at a time and at a scale that would certainly be dwarfed by the industry of the past.
Charlotte Arivella, 34, of Haverhill, owns Thistle n Sage and hand makes soft leather baby shoes, bows, bow ties, and other accessories in her home and sells them online. She also designs and sells custom onesies and toddler T-shirts.
“My great grandfather worked in a tannery in England so it’s kind of a full circle for me,” she said. “I think it’s a coincidence living in Haverhill and knowing that I’m creating something that is an exciting first for moms, having a child’s first shoes, which many parents hold onto. Hopefully my shoes will be saved for many years to come as a baby’s first shoes are a big deal, especially to moms.”
As she says on her website, she was born in a quaint village in England between Manchester and Liverpool in a place called Cheshire.
“At a young age, my parents were given an opportunity to experience the American dream first hand,” she said, noting they brought her and her two brothers to the U.S. when she was just 3 and settled in Merrimac.
Arivella graduated from Pentucket Regional High School in 2005 and began working at high-end luxury stores and boutiques at the North Shore Mall and in Newburyport.
“Doing this for more than five years, I found a passion for customer service, marketing, and sales,” she said. “I then had the opportunity to join a growing bank, Align Credit Union, which gave me more of a career path than I was looking for. I climbed the corporate ladder quickly, received my dream job title of Vice President of Retail, and thought that it couldn’t get any better.”
Eight years into focused career growth, she became a mom in 2018. Her daughter Kensington is 3 now. He husband, Kevin Arivella, works in the insurance industry.
She left the banking industry in 2020 to spend more time with her family when she found herself in a new job and new career working from home.
She began by decorating onesies with iron-on designs for infants to age 24 months and selling them online along with toddler T-shirts bearing sayings like “Chatterbox” and “Ice Cream Appreciation Society” along with whimsical images. One T-shirt design that Arivella created last August paid tribute to the 13 military men and women who were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The “Heroes” shirts raised over $1,000, which Arivella donated to the Massachusetts Military Support Foundation.
“The onesies and the tees sell well and a lot of my customers ask for custom designs,” she said. “The big thing now is gender reveals or name reveals. It’s all about the pomp and circumstance and these products continue to be popular.”
The backroom of her home became her manufacturing center and she soon expanded her product line to include custom bows made of leather or fabric for use as hair decorations for girls as well as custom bow ties for boys.
“All are hand-designed and made by me,” she said.
She expanded again, this time into soft, all-leather shoes for infants to age 3, sourcing the leather from a tanner in the midwest.
She said pediatric doctors recommend that children who are just beginning to walk should either have no shoes or wear shoes that are soft and have grip, just like her shoes have.
“When children learn to walk, they should be able to grip their toes on the floor, which you can’t do in a hard sole shoe,” she said.
Arivella is usually busy in her workshop at night and on weekends cutting and sewing leather and attaching grommets for laces.
“I’ve spent many late nights finishing work or updating my website,” she said.
“For now, I’m enjoying the exploration of being hands-on and as creative as I want and I also love the fact that my products are hand made and I don’t have to cut any corners.”
To learn more, visit https://thistlensage.com.
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