{"id":50,"date":"2008-11-09T22:11:03","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T03:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/09\/a-glimpse-into-the-yarn-industry\/"},"modified":"2008-11-09T22:11:03","modified_gmt":"2008-11-10T03:11:03","slug":"a-glimpse-into-the-yarn-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/09\/a-glimpse-into-the-yarn-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"A Glimpse into the Yarn Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought this
\narticle<\/a>, about Schaefer
\nYarn’s<\/a> “Sock the Vote” effort, was interesting for the peep into
\nthe yarn industry it gives.<\/p>\n

(“Sock the Vote” is a set of 4 colourways of sock yarn Schaefer did to
\nrepresent the colours apparently favoured by Michelle Obama, Hilary
\nClinton, Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain).<\/p>\n

In particular, the article notes, <\/p>\n

“Schaefer said her company […] did
\nsome $850,000 in business last year, the best ever for the 16-year-old
\ncompany.<\/p>\n

But the growth of those in the yarn business is exceeding demand. In
\naddition, the ailing economy is creating a slowdown.<\/p>\n

She expects sales this year to dip into the $800,000 range.<\/p>\n

Thus, she said, the popular “Sock the Vote” effort comes at a time when
\nit is indeed welcome.<\/p>\n

Schaefer told of being able to weather the downturn, but predicted
\nothers in the business aren’t going to make it because of growing
\ncompetition and the tight money market.<\/p>\n

In her business alone, she said, her 16-person work force now is down
\nto nine because of the weak economy.”\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The overall business number is good, though not huge.  Interesting
\nto see some kind of numbers — assuming an average of $20 per skein,
\nthat suggests they move 40,000 skeins a year.  That’s more than
\nmodest!<\/p>\n

It is also interesting to note the pure business terms above — while
\nit’s good  to be in a business that deals with something you
\nreally love, you never can lose sight of the fact that it is a
\nbusiness, and you have to tune to the market realities or suffer the
\nconsequences. <\/p>\n

‘d like to know how the specialized colourway did — I didn’t have enough resonance with the campaigns to feel I had to buy a particular yarn (as a memento? to make a memento?), but I don’t know if others would have.  And, looking at the colours, I did think the ones that appealed to me most were not aligned with camps I would care to support.  So — did politicizing the yarn help or hinder sales, I wonder?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought this article, about Schaefer Yarn’s “Sock the Vote” effort, was interesting for the peep into the yarn industry it gives. (“Sock the Vote” is a set of 4 colourways of sock yarn Schaefer did to represent the colours … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-diversion","category-knitting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7dQdt-O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}