We Tried to Tell You

Who's Making Money in the Fiber Industry?

• Marie Greene & Sarah Keller • Season 1 • Episode 25

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In today's episode, Sarah & Marie get candid about the costs of running a fiber business. 

Learn more about Sarah here: www.knotanotherhat.com

Learn more about Marie here: www.oliveknits.com

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to We Tried to Tell You, a podcast full of unsolicited opinions about life, fiber, everything in between. I am Marie Green and I am Sarah Keller. And today I wanted to have a real frank discussion about who's actually making money in this knitting industry that we both belong to.

SPEAKER_00

So such a good one. It is right.

SPEAKER_01

Because I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there. There's a lot of lack of knowledge. And I think because we all kind of gatekeep um what's actually happening in our little corners, you know, the LYS corner and the designer corner and the indie dyer corner. So nobody knows, right? Yeah. There's not a lot of like um information sharing going on. The closest I can think of is how TNNA does an annual survey of yarn shops or independent shops, uh yarn and needlework, and then compiles that data. And that's just resumed recently because TNNA was you know non-functioning for a little while. Right. And so that's starting to generate a little bit of information about like sales numbers and things like that. But even at that, it's not very in-depth. Um so there's just nowhere you can't just like find a resource that says, What would I expect to earn if I wanted to get into the indie dyeing industry? Or what would I expect to earn if I wanted to open a yarn shop?

SPEAKER_00

Um, so for the data TNA is collecting, could you add more questions to get more in-depth information? Or is it just do people not want to offer that, or is it just not?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's it's just like um in in progress thing. So the first, no, let's see, this was just the second year that it came out after the big hiatus. Um, and so each time it's getting refined a little bit more. And so when um Sunny is our president, um, when she presented the results of the survey at T at H this May, there was a lot of great feedback about um either how to refine questions to get more meaningful data out of them and then important questions to add. So I think it's gonna be an ongoing evolution as we get better at asking the right questions. That'll be great. That data. So yeah, I'm really excited that that has resumed. I think it's important. The hardest thing is just getting people to answer the survey.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah, it is hard because everybody's busy running a business. And a lot of people don't know how to look at their numbers to go with that's a good answers to certain questions.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, where should we start? Let's start with um, I'll just start with like yarn shop business, kind of since that's my bailiwick. Um, and like in, you know, and being transparent about where does money go in a yarn shop. Um, if you have a $10 bottle bottle of wine, I know where your mind is, Sarah Kelly. Apparently, it's 9 30 in the morning and I just misspoke and said bottle of wine instead of ball of yarn.

SPEAKER_00

I I feel that some days. I understand what you're saying. Wow. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01

$10 ball of yarn. Um, if it costs you $5 and you've got it priced at $10, I mean, this sounds so basic, right? You have $5 left to a buy another ball to put on the shelf so that you have more to sell.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Which costs five dollars. So what else do you how do you then pay to keep the lights on, pay to have employees, pay the rent, pay any other form of overhead, buy printer paper, buy what, you know, just like on and on and on. And that is the standard markup that people rely on, or even like what vendors, when they give you a price list, they're like, it cost five dollars and MSRP is 10. That's absurd. That's absolutely absurd. That gives you no room to make any money. In fact, it just continuously puts you at slight deficit until guess what? You go out of business. Oh, isn't that the story of so many small businesses?

SPEAKER_00

So something you said was really, I think, important to hear because so many people aren't thinking about having to put that money back into ordering a replacement to keep on the shelf.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Otherwise, the shelves are gonna be empty, right?

SPEAKER_01

It's like circling the drain. You just have a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less. And we try to talk, I think, I think there is some a slight shift happening right now where shop owners are considering an a mark, we call it IMU, which is initial markup. And so that would be like we get this $5 ball of yarn and we price it at $12 because then we can replace it for $5 after it sells, and we have $2 left to pay staff, pay rent, pay whatever we need to do to keep the lights on. Right. And I'm seeing more and more shop owners actually starting to see the light. I have been following this philosophy for quite a while, and I know that it makes my pricing seem higher, especially when you look at some of the online sellers who can sell at these large bulk volumes and they offer these bulk discounts, and you know, buy 10 skeins and get 10% off and all of this. And that's okay with me because I want to stay in business, and I'd like to think that's a little bit of how I arrived at 20 years. Right. Um you cannot play the price competition game and survive as a small business owner with a brick and mortar shop. That might not be true if you were online only because your overhead has significantly decreased, but it is absolutely true if you're gonna have a brick and mortar store. So um I'm glad for that trend. I'm glad I'm seeing more people uh do that. In fact, I have several um colleagues that you know I I discuss these kinds of things with regularly that are like, oh, I'm gonna go see what Sarah's got that priced at so they know what to price their stuff at. And I'm like, yeah, okay, come on around. Yeah, because we all we all should deserve to um be able to replace our inventory, pay our overhead, and pay ourselves.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good one. So talk more about that because there's a trend, which you can speak to better than I can, with shop owners who may not be. So tell us more about that.

SPEAKER_01

Well, um, it has been kind of true throughout my tenure as a shop owner that a lot like the majority of shop owners are not paying themselves. And I can tell you, I didn't pay myself for many years. I just put the money right back into ordering and covering overhead. But you know what? That was those that was the years where I just did the regular MSRP pricing because I thought I needed to be competitive. And um thankfully I have you know learned the error of my ways. And um I have I have found it to be more um of an important goal to to set so that paying myself is part of my budget and how I do my own bookkeeping. But that is not true for so many, so many yarn stores. And I think a lot of them set out kind of how I probably started, where it's like, well, I'm gonna reinvest in the store for the first few years, and then once we're successful, I'll start paying myself. But that is that is a lie to you're telling yourself. Um unless someone can really grab you by the reins and get you to turn around and focus. Um, you most likely are not gonna start paying yourself because it's too easy to keep reinvesting it in inventory and paying bills, and it's too hard to pull that money out and put it in a payment to yourself. It's the first thing that's gonna get axed if cash gets tight.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So it's really slippery slope. And then, as you know, small businesses are so many don't make it past the first five years. We know that to be true. And so they say, I'm gonna pay myself once I'm successful. So then they maybe don't make it, you know, or they'll just barely make it five years. They close, they never paid themselves the whole time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's wild to me.

SPEAKER_01

It is, it is wild. And a lot of people say, I mean, not a lot, but I've heard people say, Well, that's okay. I love doing this. No, it's not okay. It's not okay. And that's great that you love doing it, but that is not a model that we should be embodying for small business. We shouldn't be running small businesses as businesses that are profitable ventures, because if we just say we're here for the love of it, that's the most privileged thing in the world. Like not every we need to be able to support ourselves as women, as small business owners, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00

I well, I think that part of it is that's not setting up a realistic model for other shops. You know, if one or two shops in the area have the privilege of not making any money, but other shops can't exist if they don't, you know, that's just not a level playing field, first of all. And it is, I think something you said is so key here. It's a business. It's a business. My work is a business, your work is a business. And I think this is just my personal opinion. I'm sure some people will not agree with this, but my experience in observing the industry over the last 30 plus years is that there have been many people that go into it as a hobby. Yes, without the business acumen, without the the bookkeeping skills, without any kind of business infrastructure in place, kind of winging it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because it comes from a place of I love this and I just want to do it.

SPEAKER_01

I think it'll be fun.

SPEAKER_00

And yeah, it's like jumping into the deep end when you don't know how to swim. It's not sustainable.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And I think a lot of people um because they're coming from this, I love knitting, I want to open a yarn shop, or I love yarn and I want to open a yarn shop, there's not the intention behind it where they're like, I would like to go into a business to support myself. So it's a chicken and egg almost situation. And it it needs to just, yeah, people just need to take those steps to educate themselves. If that's if the bookkeeping is not the thing that they know well or love or you know can handle, they they need to make sure that somebody is helping them on that front. In my humble opinion, how about on the designing side?

SPEAKER_00

I know.

SPEAKER_01

Where where's the money there?

SPEAKER_00

Uh it's in volume. It's in volume. So one of the things that helped me is I hired a business coach very early on. I I started network design kind of on a whim, honestly, but I'm very entrepreneurial-minded like you. And so I very quickly surpassed my own expectations of what that would look like and was able to leave my my day job. And I thought, okay, if this is what I'm gonna do, let me figure out the logistics. So the first business coach I hired, she was specifically ingrained in the fiber community. So she was a good one to start with. She's not around, uh, I mean, she's alive, but she doesn't do that anymore. Um, but at the time, it was so helpful because something she said to me defied everything I'd heard from everyone else, because there's a lot of talk about how there's no money in the industry, you know, there's no money as a designer. And that's true to a point. But she said, don't listen to them. There are some people making $10,000 a month. And that was 15 years ago, she told me.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And at the time I thought, okay, now I know what's possible. So that's really good for my mindset and my planning. And I just need to figure out how I'm gonna do this. So that was a really good little nugget. And I knew even in the early stages of my business, that my my pattern sales were in the top one to two percent of Ravelry sales, only because I was consistently putting out new patterns and I was really good at marketing myself. And those things have to be in place because you have to sell enough patterns to make money. That's really the key point. And then when you think about if it if you sell it through yarn stores, you're making less than the price. Right. And I can speak to that in a little bit more detail in a second. But it really takes, I mean, there are people who are outwardly very known who I wouldn't say they're like the top most popular ones, but they're people that you know, you see their designs, they seem successful, but they're still struggling to sell even enough to to make a couple hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_01

Can you talk a little bit about the cost behind a pattern that people may not realize?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I mean, part of like for my business in particular, and mine is I would say probably different than most designers. Uh not only have I done this full-time for, you know, nearly 15 years, but I, you know, you have to pay first for all the business infrastructure, right? So you have to pay for your website and all of the plugins and all of the you know, programs that you use and all of that. And then with the pattern, there's, you know, not even counting the 80 hours of knitting and the labor, you know, the 10 to 20 hours of design work that goes into it or the amount of time that goes into working with test knitters. But you have, you know, the photography costs. The if you're hiring someone to do your layout, that costs uh, you know, I used to get a lot of free yarn, but I choose not to. I want to buy my own yarn because I don't want to be beholden to anyone, right? Like the creative freedom of deciding what I want to use. So I am buying the yarn, and all of that adds up. I mean, a pattern to produce it can cost a lot. And a great example, I mean, this is sort of an outlier, but my watermark pattern, so that's two patterns that ended up being much more involved to write those patterns than I expected, because I always love to go into something thinking this is gonna be great. I'm gonna really make it simple on myself and never do. But it ended up being almost 50 pages for each pattern because I wrote separate sets of instructions for all the sizes to make it just easier for people to follow. So it's a lot of pages, it's a lot of lines of text. So the tech editing for those two patterns, I I can't even believe I'm saying this. This is so wild to me. Uh cost me a thousand dollars. Okay, one thousand dollars is how much my tech editing costs. Sorry, I'm laughing. It's so not funny. So uh horrendous. But it but I had an excellent tech editor shout out to Erica Close. Like she's kicks butt, she's really good, um, very thorough. But to get through both patterns, yeah, it was a thousand dollars. And so all the patterns that sell through a yarn store. So I initially had the pattern up for sale for a discounted price, $10.95. And even at that price, some people say, Well, that's too much. I can't be spending that much on a pattern. Well, then don't, but I can't charge less than that. That was the discounted price. Regular price is $12.95. But through the entire pre-order period, people could buy it at that discount. If they bought it through the yarn store, my amount is seven dollars and seventy-seven cents. Now you subtract what Ravel retakes, you subtract the PayPal fees.

SPEAKER_01

Ravelry takes three and a half percent.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And then uh so I come away with maybe PayPal is probably three and a half percent or something like that. Yeah, three and a half or five percent. I don't know, some somewhere in that range. Um and so it's just a craft though is chipping down. So I'm at like six seventy-five, seven dollars or something for what I take home, which means I have to sell almost 150 patterns just to pay for my tech editing, just that one thing. That doesn't that doesn't cover what I spent on the yarn. It doesn't cover the cost of my Canva um subscription so that I can use my layout now because I used to pay someone and I just decided it was too expensive and I'm gonna do it myself.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like I need to pay you for each time I knit this thing.

SPEAKER_00

I'm on my third one. I love it. No, I love that you're knitting it multiple times. And it brings me so much joy to do the work, but at the same time, anybody who scoffs at the price of a pattern, you have to think about how many patterns, like how many patterns I have to produce and sell in order to pay all the things. I used to have five employees and I had way more overhead than I have now. And I finally got to the point where I just it was exhausting and I didn't want to manage people all day. And so I've been able to cut down my overhead. But I I used to have to make between $15 and $20,000 every single month to pay all of my people because I paid them well for you know the work and plus to cover all the costs of the tech I was using and so and be able to pay myself.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And there are months where to pay yourself is really tough because it's that's why it's always the first thing to go, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's yes, I've had a lot of success, but I've worked my butt off and I've been so consistent with constantly producing new work, constantly marketing myself. I have a a big newsletter subscription. Subscription, I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for?

SPEAKER_01

Audience.

SPEAKER_00

Audience. I have a big newsletter audience, which is great. I have a private community in NitCamp and and I'm just consistent with how I promote my work and and I produce reliable patterns. Yes, right. Right, you know, they can trust them. And so that's really important. But then there's also on the other side of it, there's you know, pattern support. And oh, right.

SPEAKER_01

So the costs don't stop once you've produced the pattern. It's not like you produce it and then you just sit back and reap in the sales.

SPEAKER_00

Just wait for the money to roll in young.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

No, and I I've worked with lots of other designers. I've hired other designers to design for my platform. And you know, we've had candid conversations about how for many of them they'll release a pattern and be lucky if they can come out with $300 in sales. And when you think about the just sheer number of hours that go into that pattern, yeah, it takes a long time really to ever make enough that you're paying yourself and covering all of your costs. So the more things you can do yourself, the better. And so that helps because it cuts down on the actual physical cost, but it's still more time.

SPEAKER_01

Well, right.

SPEAKER_00

Like someone might email you and they have a question that they don't understand something about, and it's gonna take you what, half an hour plus Well, most of the time when people email with a question, and this I would say is true because I pay for tech editing and because I do a lot of, you know, my patterns are tested. So usually, I'm not saying I'm perfect, like mistakes can happen, but usually by the time a pattern comes out, it's been vetted. Yeah. And there's not issues. Right. So when people email and say, I think the pattern's wrong, and they're like, this doesn't add up, it's usually not reading it properly, right, right, you know, kind of getting confused and falling the wrong line, you know, that kind of stuff. And I still take the time to check to go check and and you know, explain kind of where they went wrong. But that's that's yeah, by the end of the the interaction, going back and forth with someone to help, that you know, $675 or $7 I got, I'm now paying them to my pattern. So I mean, thankfully, not everybody sends an email, but that's a whole other conversation about the pattern support aspect. But certainly the better quality of the pattern, the less of that you have to do, which is great. But um, but as a designer, I will say that the key to making money at it is you have to be super consistent. You have to produce a lot more work than you think that you should, you know, not not that you think you should, but you have to produce a lot more than feels reasonable.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00

And because you have to keep something new available and um and also have multiple streams of income, which is really, I think, where I've succeeded. I've yes, you've come up with a lot of other ways to make a living, and that's why I can do this full-time for 15 years.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah. Right. Oh, so uh, that's all really fascinating. I think these are really important things that um like our mutual customer base, just even the ones that already know a lot of that, just it's a good reminder. It's sometimes what they what we present outwardly in social media or in whatever, you know, public appearances or whatever might seem like it's this glamorous, rolling in it kind of thing, and the reality is just it's not that. Um, I did a little bit of you know looking, researching yesterday just in anticipation of our topic. And really what I was able to find is that the people who are really truly making the serious money are at the very top of the supply chain in our in our industry. So that would be conglomerates, private equity firms, really large scale commercial mills. Those are the places where there's actual like profit margins that they can project and count on. And as you trickle down in production from those levels, it's like the margins get slimmer and slimmer and slimmer and slimmer. Yeah. So it's It's a tough reality. Um I've always heard um we used to have some friends that own a grocery store and like that groceries have like the worst margins. It's like 10% markup on stuff. I have no idea if that's true, but I always am like, it's grocery stores and then yarn stores. Because you do have to well, uh okay, I back that bookstores have it rough too because there's a price printed on the book and they cannot charge a more than that. So they've got to find another way to make money, also. So at least we can we've got a little leniency in our industry to charge um what we you know feel like we need to to survive, and then hope that we also are providing enough service and atmosphere and whatever it else to make someone happy that they will pay our price, you know, pay $12 instead of $10 for that ball of yarn.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I think there's something to be said about that, right? Where you can always find something cheaper, right? You can find yarn cheaper, you can find a free pattern, but it's it's everything that goes along with that purchase. It's not only the quality of the item you're getting, but it's the support, everything else around it that I think increases the value. And that's how you set yourself apart as a yarn store, as a designer. It's what else are you gonna offer? Because anybody can type something on top of like you can go on Amazon and buy weirdo kind of yarns. I don't know if they're I don't know, like they're no name kind of brands, but they're something it's made to look like yarn. But that doesn't mean you're gonna have, you know, who's gonna help you when you are confused about something that you're working on, you know, it's so I think part of how you make a living at this is we have to approach it with that customer service mindset as well, because that is part of the job.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

And that's why someone will come to you or come to me even if the price maybe is a little bit more, you know. I don't have a bunch of free patterns floating around because I've spent a lot of money and time to produce them. And I know that part of what I offer for that price is that if you have a problem, you can email me and I will respond and I will help you.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

But but it's a ditto. I guess it's yeah, a ditto, right? It's we have the same approach here. And I think it's I wonder if there's an expectation. I guess what I was gonna say is I think there's an expectation from customers to receive a certain amount of care and support that I don't know if it's true across the board that everybody offers that. I've had some people email me about other designers' palms because they're not getting a response from the other designer.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And there's definitely yarn stores where either they don't do help or maybe the help is limited to um yarns and supplies purchased at that store, which I think is reasonable, but it's not our policy. Um, so yeah, there's varying degrees.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah. It's it's interesting. I had a customer once, and this just I guess goes to speak to how little maybe the public understands what's happening behind the scenes and what's involved, because I had a customer once who bought a pattern, I think uh at at like an online store, like Webbs or something. One of my patterns.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, oh yes.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yes. Do you remember this? I did at one point I put that pattern on sale on my website like six months, a year later. And so she emails me and says, Um, well, I bought this for more, so I would like you to refund me the two. And I was like, Well, first of all, I didn't get that purchase price from them. I probably am getting one dollar right from that sale. And so if I give you two dollars, uh, I'm losing money. I'm paying you to knit this. And and she said, but her, this is what really got me is she said, because we're all just in this for the love of knitting.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00

I do love knitting, but this is my business. I have to pay my mortgage and keep my lights on.

SPEAKER_01

And this is the you just made me think of this like whole other facet of this that I I can't believe I even overlooked it. And that was the the festival part of it. Oh, everyone, you know, the what you need to charge to make any money putting on producing a fiber festival, it's too much for people to pay. And people would be just like, but I but just these people are doing it just for the love of it, or organizers even saying, Well, we're just doing it for the love of it. So our goal is to just break even. And I would be like, No, uh, for 30 hours a week of work for the last one year, I'm not actually just looking to break even.

SPEAKER_00

So right, and you put on an amazing festival. I still miss it. It was the best one. Columbia groups.

SPEAKER_01

But it's part of why it's gone, you know. It's just what I would have actually had to charge people for classes, marketplace entry, in order just to make a decent amount of money and pay all of the people helping me, which was just a handful.

SPEAKER_00

Because most of them were volunteering. It was I mean, it was yeah, nobody would have paid those class prices.

SPEAKER_01

They already balked at paying $75 for a three-hour class. So it just wasn't it's not realistic. No, unless, of course, you're not in it to make money.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So then that's not for me. That's why the festival's over.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not looking to gouge people, but I am looking to be paid for my time.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Yeah, you you have to be. And I don't think we should be racing to the bottom for the trying to offer thing. And you know, and you get what you pay for.

SPEAKER_01

You do, right.

SPEAKER_00

You really do get what you pay for. And I think that uh the more we can do to help the knitters in our communities kind of just have a an appreciation for what's going on behind the scenes and recognize how much work is happening. I mean, when I had to make enough money to pay my staff, I was so completely stressed out constantly. I had to launch things constantly to be able to pay everyone every month. The stress was unbelievable. And that was a good five years like that. And I don't bring in as much now, but I also don't have to because otherwise I only need to make sure that I can pay myself. And that's taken a lot of the stress off because it's just not sustainable to be doing that and trying to pay everybody a living wage and manage, you know, and then just economic changes and all the everything getting more expensive. Every single platform I use has raised their prices. Oh, yeah. And, you know, there are things that people don't think about, like video storage. I have hundreds or thousands of hours of videos that I have to pay to store.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that's like a thousand dollars a year just for that one thing. And then I have Dropbox, and then I have Google Workspace and so many things, all the plugins on my website and the guy that I pay every month to be there in case my website crashes. And, you know, there's just so many costs that we never see. And they're not sexy and they're not visible, but they are required for this all to work. And so I think it is easy to to scoff at the cost of a skein of yarn or to balk at the cost of a pattern when it seems like this is just a piece of paper. Like, why is it why can't this just be a dollar? Because no one could do it and make a living. And really that's my I mean, this is my living. If I have to go get a day job, then I won't be able to do any of this anymore. I won't have time because it consumes. I was just talking to some fellow book coaches because that's a whole other thing that I'm doing. And they were kind of talking about how much time they have to spend on Substack, you know, creating content. I'm like, you guys have no idea how much time I spend every single month for the knitting community and the patterns and all that stuff. It it's an inordinate amount of time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it still never feels like enough. People still love more. And it's like, well, why can't you go back and update your old patterns? Why can't you, you know, this one pattern that you took out of circulation, why can't you update it for us? Because it's rewide rewriting an entire pattern and retesting it. And I I'm I don't have time. Like I just so I wonder how I got burned out. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

How did Marie go down the slippery slope of burnout? Let me count the ways. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I'll be sliding with you if you go.

SPEAKER_00

I know, I know, but it's I think it's such an important conversation, Sarah.

SPEAKER_01

I think this is a really good yeah, I think it is too, and I hope it's helpful to people listening um just to give a little bit more insight into what's going on behind the scenes, right?

SPEAKER_00

And we didn't speak to the hand dyeing aspect because neither we did it because that's not our thing, but it it's the I would I I would just venture to guess the margins are just as slim.

SPEAKER_01

And that's a very physical job, too. And it's a physical job, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, and sort of on that note, mills. I you I have toured many mills, and it seems like I must have the kiss of death for a fiber mill because it's like I would to tour the mill, I would take a field group of knitters there for a field trip, and within a few months it would close.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, you're not invited to any more mills.

SPEAKER_00

I know. I can't go to mills anymore because I think that I have like bad juju or something, but it they just it's so unsustainable, it's so difficult. And it's because it's a very physical job, it requires a lot of physical labor, the not market, but the margins are so small, yeah, that it's difficult to make a living and you have to physically put your body into it. And the same would go for being a hand dyer. And again, it's easy to look at a skein of hand-dyed yarn and think, well, but I can buy this one from Michaels for four dollars or whatever.

SPEAKER_01

I am pretty certain that the going average, I I you know, like $32 maybe for a hundred grams of super washed hand-dyed yarn. I I feel in my deep in my gut that that is not a price that's a sustainable price. I feel like those are probably should be priced closer to $40 for what's going into them. Yeah. Um, and the markup. A lot of hand dyers that want to sell to shops, um, especially kind of newer or less uh smaller sized operations, they want to do like a 60-40 markup or a 70-30 markup, and that's not sustainable for a shop. So then it's like, okay, I'm buying it from them at 70% of what they'll sell it for. I gotta mark way past what they're gonna sell it for because that I still need to make a sustainable amount of money off of that skein. Right. So I feel like it's been consistently underpriced.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it probably has, and it's and the prices have gone up in the last few years because their costs are going up. Exactly. And it's still probably not enough when you just think about the labor.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And then you have to start thinking, okay, is this realistic that we make this product that's you know should cost $45 for a hundred grams of hand-dyed superwash yarn? No, it's not really realistic at all, and that's probably why it's being under underpriced.

SPEAKER_00

And well, there's something to be said about what things should cost and what people are willing to pay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right? Like if I charged for what I think a pattern pattern should cost, I think it should be twenty dollars.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I don't charge that because I don't think people will pay that. Yeah, they already, you know, scoff at a $12.95 sweater pattern, but I stand behind my pricing because I provide you, and I've been doing this since before this was a thing. I was putting tutorial links in my patterns since the beginning, since the very beginning. Tips and resources and resources, and here's more how to be successful. I'll put a page on my website that shows extra help that's just too much to fit into the pattern, like, you know, pick up the stitches like this, hold your needle like this. Here's, you know, try this troubleshooting. I put all that stuff in there. I feel great about that. And I think if anything, they should be priced higher, but I'm not going to because I don't think that people will pay it. And so I think that's probably where it's at with hand-dyed yarn. It's like it should be priced more. Will people pay it? Probably not, especially when everything costs more right now.

SPEAKER_01

Everything. Uh-huh. Everything. Super interesting discussion. Yeah. I'm glad we had it. I hope it didn't feel too heavy for everybody, but it's I think it's just really important that we have periodic reminders just of what this industry is when you really boil it down. It's a lot of people who really love this industry and are working really hard to keep it alive with not a ton of reward.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think there's a lot that goes into it. And my experience has been the more I learn about every step in the fiber process, the more I learn about the farmer raising the sheep, the more I learn about shearing, the more I learn about the mills, the more I learn about hand dyeing, the more I learn about yarn stores, the more appreciation I have for everything that goes into a pattern or a skein of yarn, all the things that have to happen before that point that lead up to that to make that a reality. It's so helpful and it helps me feel a bigger appreciation for all of those people that are part of that process and more respect for their pricing. And hopefully there's some of that comes through for those of you listening who are like, whoa, this is a lot. Uh, you know, but it's I think it's just really helpful to realize how hard everybody's working and that nobody's out here raking it in, like leaning back on our little, you know, on our yachts, on our yachts, on our catamaran. Right. Just living the good life while everybody throws money at us. Wouldn't that be lovely? No. Working our butts off and constantly pivoting, constantly trying to think of what we do next to stay relevant. And exactly. It's a lot of it's a lot. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_01

It's a lot.

SPEAKER_00

Did I say it's a lot yet? It's a lot.

SPEAKER_01

It is a lot.

SPEAKER_00

So much.

SPEAKER_01

Well, on that note, Marie, what do you think what are we going to talk about next week?

SPEAKER_00

Well, this is a really good segue, I think, because something we kind of talked about a little bit today that I think deserves its own episode is talking about how to access pattern support, what the etiquette is of pattern support. Basically, when you're a knitter, how do you get help with your pattern? Great. What's topic? What's the right approach? What's how do you approach a designer? How do you approach a yarn store? We're going to talk about that next time.

SPEAKER_01

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

I dig it. All right. Well, folks, uh, you know, this has been, I think, a deep but important conversation. So next time you look at a skein of yarn or next time you look at the cost of a pattern, just remember We tried to tell you. We did. And we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01

Bye bye.