Growing Your Business

Libby O’Bryan is an artist based in Asheville, NC. Trained in fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, business administration at the University of San Francisco, and fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, O’Bryan melds her hybrid background into a conceptual art practice. Her work has been exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois; South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, Cameron Art Museum, and the Penland School of Crafts Gallery, North Carolina; the Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; and was featured in PBS’s Craft in America series (Episode XII, May 2014).

Libby O’Bryan’s business, Western Carolina Sewing Company (Sew Co.), is an effort to preserve the skill of sewing and our domestic manufacturing economy.  Sew Co. offers sewn product development, cutting and sewing services of discerning quality with socially responsible and unconventional business concepts.  Sew Co. shares a roof and a vision for progressive production with The Oriole Mill in Hendersonville.

Born to activist parents and raised in Washington D.C. in the 1980s, Sekou Coleman is a child of the movement. After obtaining a degree in music from the University of Pittsburgh, he founded a program to teach music theory and business to at-risk youth. His work with the program attracted the attention of a national nonprofit devoted to improving opportunities for black men and boys, and he worked there from 1998 until it ceased operations.

Coleman moved to Asheville in 2011 and quickly involved himself in the local community, supporting numerous organizations and advocacy groups. A deep believer in the restorative power of the arts, Coleman currently serves as the Executive Director for Asheville Writers in the Schools, a nonprofit igniting social change through culture and self-expression. Asheville Writers in the Schools is the parent organization for Word on the Street/Voz de les Jóvenes, a program uplifting the stories and voices of marginalized teens. As a volunteer, Coleman also devotes considerable time to CoThinkk, a social change philanthropy that works to accelerate positive changes in communities of color in Western North Carolina and Bountiful Cities, an urban agriculture nonprofit.

Coleman feels called to honor the ancestors by preparing the next generation for a bright future. In all things, he seeks to recognize his own power while also embodying humility and respect.

Is owner at Mtn Merch retail stores in Biltmore Village and Lexington Avenue downtown. The stores are dedicated to art and  products created in Asheville. There are over 60 local artists and creators represented in these mountain themed stores. Mtn Merch also carries merchandise created by their sister company Monogram Asheville. This embroidery business creates one of a kind caps and tshirts for Mtn Merch as well as local businesses in the area.