Darcy Cameron, the woman behind Shibui Knits, has a motto: “If we’re not having fun, what’s the point?” Her staff at Shibui now repeat this phrase back to her. This insistence on an ethos of enjoyment in the workplace may come from having experienced its opposite.

Prior to entrepreneurship, Cameron was an accountant, a job for which she was “spectacularly ill-suited.” Accounting appeased her practical side, but ultimately, the job fit like a square peg in a round hole. “I live in the world of ideas. I’m able to dream things up and get a team excited,” she says. Now Cameron does exactly this for a living — dreaming and knitting the way forward for herself and her company.

Cameron taught herself to knit in high school, but it wasn’t until her son and her sister’s kids were born that she picked up the craft in earnest. Fair Isle, cable knit, you name it — whatever Cameron wanted to learn, those kids got.

A trait mirrored in her childhood role model — Madame Curie. For her pioneering spirit and scientific accomplishments in a male-dominated world, Cameron’s role model as a child was Madame Curie. “When I was a child, there were no Sally Rides. I was never hearing about women accomplishing anything, except for Madame Curie. So I just fixated on her,” says Cameron. This same self-starter spirit that she admired took her from hobbyist knitter to business owner in 2005, when she opened her own knitting shop, Knit Purl. 

As a knitting teacher traveling between stores in the Portland area, Cameron discovered that knit shops are often run by knitters rather than business people. “They’re often undercapitalized and, from a design standpoint, messy and not super well put together,” Cameron explains. Cameron saw the hole in the market and decided to open her own knit shop — one that leveraged her business background and design sensibilities.

While Cameron’s age — she was 51 when she became an entrepreneur — might label her a latecomer, Cameron started strong. Knit Purl was a hit, and Cameron found her stride in business ownership. “I didn’t have the sense to be afraid,” she recalls. “I understood that if you’re going to do something, you don’t put a net below you. You just go all in.”

A couple years into Knit Purl, Cameron realized there were products she wanted that she couldn’t purchase from US suppliers. So she flew to Peru to meet with a mill there, designed her own yarns, and started Shibui Knits.

Cameron launched Shibui in 2007 in the basement of Knit Purl, which she closed just last year. In its place, Shibui has grown to a position of prominence in the knitting world. This is largely thanks to Shibui’s fashion-forward style, but the business was also among the first of its kind to leverage e-commerce capabilities and sleek, stylized marketing. “We were one of the few businesses that brought pattern design in-house. We pioneered knitting that was fashion-based rather than cozy, funky-sweater-based,” says Cameron.

The name Shibui came about on a trip to Japan. While shopping in Ginza, Cameron picked out a bag dyed with persimmons. 

“It was very rustic but simple and perfect.” Her friend looked at the bag and said, “Oh, very shibui.” Cameron asked her what that meant. She replied, “Elegance with a touch of bitterness.” 

“I love that because if you think about great art, a symphony or something, it’s the minor note, the discordant thing, the sad moment that makes the joyful parts richer. That touch of bitterness is what enlivens the sense of it,” says Cameron.

In many ways, Shibui has made the philosophy of its namesake a centering value for the company, informing the decisions Cameron and her crew make when dreaming up next season’s line.

“If people don’t have that little bit of ‘I’m not sure’ at first, they never have the passion. It’s the touch of bitterness,” says Cameron. “You get people passionate about things when they start to change their mind about something.”

Just as she found her fit in business ownership, over the years Cameron has further refined her role at Shibui to the one that suits her best — the visionary force that drives the company.

“Over time I’ve started trusting my own judgment and taste more,” says Cameron. “I’ve learned not to be afraid of being specific.”

There was a time when Cameron didn’t believe her skills matched those of other entrepreneurs, who she felt could “do the whole range of things.” Debunking these myths has been a journey of discovery for Cameron.

Along the way, she’s seen handicaps turn into strengths. For example, the skillset that originally felt limiting forced Cameron to hire people who excel in their own specialties. “Everybody who works here is smarter than me at something,” she says.

Big-picture work may be her most visible contribution to Shibui, but Cameron’s gift for leadership and empowering others is an inestimable contribution to the company, one that allows her to not only hire top talent, but to grow it at home.

“My philosophy for raising my son was to catch him doing something right. That’s what I do at work: I catch people doing something right. When people feel appreciated, seen, and heard, there’s a tremendous loyalty – a real stickiness – that comes with that.”

Cameron points to an experience in the early days of Knit Purl as the beginning of this philosophy. “There was a woman in her early sixties who had always worked as a clerk at yarn stores. I saw she had potential to do a bigger project, but she was afraid. I said, ‘I think you can do it. Why don’t you give it a try?’ And she did, and she surprised herself.”

Cameron realized she had hit on something big. “That’s what’s powerful for people — when you create a situation where they can do things they didn’t know they could, and they surprise themselves and feel proud of themselves.”

Shibui’s success is arguably as much a product of Cameron’s commitment to her people as it is a product of her knitting. As for Cameron herself, she’s still tempted to chalk it up to luck. “I am completely shocked this whole thing happened. I’m sure the whole thing is just a giant coincidence,” she says.

Whatever the case, the connection between Cameron and her staff is valued by both sides — and for Cameron, it’s the most surprising thing about starting Shibui. “My heart just fills with love. If you had told me how much I would love all these people before I started, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Cameron says.

Written by Hannah Dugan, an Emerging Leaders intern at EO member company Thesis Agency.