For a few months now, I've been telling you our story. Where we began, the people who built this with me, and the years that nearly ended us.
This is the last chapter of Road to 10, and I saved it on purpose.
When I started thinking about how to mark ten years, I asked my friend Laura Dobratz of Emma's Yarn to design a pattern just for us. Laura is a fellow shop owner (Four Pearls Yarn Shop in Winter Haven Florida) who I met through Fiberside Chats, and I've admired her from the very beginning. I admire both her business sense as one of the faces behind Emma's Yarn and her talent as a designer. So when I wanted someone to help me mark this milestone, she was the first person I thought of.
She said yes. And then she did something I didn't expect. She didn't just design something beautiful. She read our whole story back to me in stitches.
Here's how Laura describes it, in her own words:
"I incorporated a wavy pattern and knitted it from side to side to portray the ups and downs. The little clusters of yarn overs represent the community standing behind you at every turn."
She nailed it. The ups and downs are all there, worked right into the fabric. And those little clusters, the community standing behind me at every turn? That's you. That has always been you.
Telling this story over these last months has been one of the most vulnerable things I've ever done. I let you see parts most business owners would rather keep hidden. The 401K I drained. The credit we ran up just to keep yarn on the shelves. The nights I genuinely did not think we would make it. I didn't share all of that for sympathy. I shared it because it's the truth, and because you were in it with me the whole time, whether you knew it or not.
And here is the part I need you to hear, one more time, because it's the whole point. I am still standing here because you keep choosing this shop. Every skein, every class, every Saturday morning you spend at our table instead of somewhere else. That is not a small thing. That is THE thing. A small business like this one lives and dies on exactly that choice, and you have made it, over and over, for ten years.
So what comes next?
We keep evolving. We stay true to who we are, and we keep bringing you the highest quality yarns and accessories we can find. We keep standing with the companies who value their partnerships with small brick and mortar shops like ours.
We carry the hard lessons of these ten years with us instead of pretending they didn't happen, and we let them make us better. And above all, we stay connected to you, because that is the only reason any of this works.
Ten years, worked into a single design. I can't think of a better way to say what I've been trying to say all along.
Thank you for standing behind me at every turn.
Enjoy our Road to 10 Shopify Playlist representing just some of the music that kept me going through the last ten years. Many of the songs have been part of the soundtrack of Dances With Wool since 2016.
