Felix: Today I'm joined by Sarah Resnick from Gist Yarn. Gist Yarn as a yarn shop that inspires a growing community of weavers with quality weaving yarn, fresh pattern designs and a warm and welcoming spot to find your weaving home. And was started in 2017 and based out of Norwood, Massachusetts. Welcome, Sarah.


Sarah: Thanks, Felix. I'm excited to be on.


Felix: Yes. So tell us about your journey so far, because I know that your journey actually starts way back in your childhood. So tell us more about how you got into the yarn business?


Sarah: Yes. Well, I have been interested in fabric, and yarn, and knitting since I was quite little. A good friend of mine, her grandmother, taught me how to knit when I was seven years old. And I found my way through various fiber crafts throughout my childhood. And in my early adulthood, I was working on a farm out in California where we had a bunch of sheep. And we were growing them for meat, but there was a lot of wool in the barns from them over the years. And so that tipped me into interests in spinning wool. And I also saw this loom, a floor loom in the barn, that I was really curious about that whole year. So the following year, I moved to Toronto and I had an opportunity to take a weaving class. And the rest is history.
I really loved the methodical and creative mix of being a weaver and choosing the yarn and materials to make fabric with. So I've been a weaver for I think 12, or 13, or 14 years. And I started my company, Gist Yarn, four years ago in 2017. And my goal was to find beautiful materials and yarn for weavers and to sell it to them. And we've evolved a lot and grown since then. And now a big focus of our company is making our own lines of yarn. We mostly work with farmers and textile mills in the US. And we produce patterns for weavers. We make podcast episodes for people to listen to. And we're really focused on building a community for makers and weavers. And that's what we do.


Felix: Awesome. So this lifelong almost, the right experience with yarn, with weaving, what directed you towards the business side? Why did you decide to say, "You know what, let's start a business," around this passion of yours?


Sarah: Yeah, that's a good question. I had been working for a bit before in sewing manufacturing, and learning my way around the textile mill scene, and US cut and sew factories in the US. And I knew that there was just beautiful quality materials that were being made here, and they weren't necessarily easy for weavers, at that time, to access. And so I wanted to be part of that link. I wanted to work with textile mills to make their products more accessible to weavers, and I wanted to get weavers more excited about working with local materials and beautiful materials.
So that's what I wanted to do and e-commerce seemed like the best way to do it. Weaving, as you can imagine, is pretty niche. So it's not like I could open up a store on the corner and find thousands of weavers in my neighborhood that would want to buy yarn. But the internet is a really wonderful place in the respect that people in small niches can come together. And I was really lucky. On the first day I opened my shop, a number of people bought from us on the first day, and really we've been supported by our community ever since.


Felix: Awesome. So for others out there that have this similar path where there's a passion of theirs, and then they recognize that, for whatever interest, for whatever reason, they want to get more involved and get into the game of either the business side or just wanting to be involved in more of the creative side, the creation side of whatever their passion is. What are some of the pros and cons with that kind of combination, where you have this passion that is probably a hobby at first, then you want to now build a business around it? What have you learned along the way about what's an advantage or what's hard about that?


Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I think it's mostly pros. I can't really imagine running a business about something that I didn't care about. I think it would just be boring and it wouldn't keep me motivated. So I think one of the cons people can often talk about is that if you turn a hobby or something you love into your work, then it can make the hobby less fun. I would say running a company making and selling yarn is not... I don't spend my days or really much of any of my work time actually weaving at the loom anymore. So the hobby is still quite different for me. But I'm really lucky to get to have my work be adjacent to one of the things that I love to do, and that adjacency is making yarn and working with our great team to develop patterns and content for our community.


Felix: Yeah. What would you say was the most important or maybe useful knowledge or skill that you have? Because you were a customer, a consumer in this space, someone that... Or had passion as an end user of the products that you're creating, what are some of the biggest advantages that you recognize? Because you came from that position that you thought that helps you a lot in growing your business?


Sarah: That's a good question. I think one of the things that I was not so afraid of right from the beginning was creating a product that would have a higher price point, because I knew that what I wanted to do, which was we work with a lot of organic fibers, we're working with a lot of domestic producers, we're making yarn in small batches, which is more expensive. I knew that there was going to be a higher price point there. And because I'm a weaver, and because I know how many hours go into weaving and designing one scarf, or one shawl, or one blanket, I felt confident. And because I know the community of weavers, I felt confident that people would be willing, and even excited, to pay a little bit more to have materials that they really knew a story behind, and were excited to support, and were really high quality. And so I think that you can only really imagine or be less afraid of building out a higher price point if you have a good sense of the community and of the market. And that is really what has allowed us to grow, not being afraid of saying, "This is really high quality, this is exactly how we make it, and who we make it with. And this is why it's worth a bit of a premium price point. And we'd love for you to join us if you'd like to."


Felix: Yeah. I think that that's definitely an important point about how the easiest way to feel comfortable, to justify maybe a higher price point, is truly believing in your product, and truly believing in that you are offering something that is worthy of that kind of price tag. And because you understand the quality, the craftsmanship, the work that's required behind it, I think a lot of people might feel, typically, maybe ashamed even of charging higher price. But if you know the quality is behind and you know, again, the market, you're a customer yourself, you see the value in a higher quality, production, higher quality material, you can see why, you can feel confident in charging higher prices.


Sarah: Yeah.


Felix: Yeah. Now, when you decided that you wanted to get into this space, what were some of the biggest skill sets that you have to learn? Because I think, again, a lot of people might have passions that they have, and then they want to get into the business of that passion. And it's not just taking your passion, doing it everyday, like you said, you don't spend your days doing your passion itself. So what are some of the skill sets that were super important for you to pick up early on when you do want to make this transition from just a passion to an actual business?


Sarah: Yeah. So our business has grown so much and changed so much over the years. So I think it's been different skill sets that I've had to learn and stretch for in different times. But if I'm thinking pre launch, and in the first year, I mean, the biggest thing I had to learn was digital marketing. I had never worked in this space before. I had been working as a community organizer and working for nonprofits. I read a lot about digital marketing. And I watched a lot of companies that I admired to see what they did. But it was definitely a learning curve to figure out the right ways to get traffic and the right ways to build a sense of community around a company that was entirely online.
And I think one of the things that I did off the bat, and that we still work really hard to do, is be really clear about who we are and the size that we are. So when it was just... Now we're a team of five people. But when it was just me, I used mostly the first person in our marketing, because it was just me writing everything. I showed people photos of where we were shipping from, I invited people along on the journey of how our business was growing. And I think that helped build a sense of community around it. So that was, I guess, more of the soft skill of figuring out how to really tell the story of what we were doing in a compelling way. And then, I also learned about paid traffic acquisition, some successful some unsuccessful, but we worked a lot with driving Pinterest traffic, building out lead magnets that would get people over to our website, learning about email marketing and email marketing automation. So those are the more, I guess, hard skills, as opposed to the softer skills of storytelling. And I flexed my learning muscles on both of those to learn those in the beginning.


Felix: Yeah, there's that, the first point about basically being transparent about your business, and not trying to make it larger than it is. A lot of people might think, "Oh, you want to appear very professional, very buttoned up." And maybe that you are more than just yourself that's running the business. Why do you think it helped you to be transparent about the stage that you're at, showing them behind the scenes early on, letting them know that it was just you behind the company?


Sarah: Yeah. That's a really good question. I mean, we have just... Maybe everyone says this to you, and obviously, I'm biased. But we have the most amazing customers. And people really have been excited to support us and to see what we're going to work on next. And I think that's a big part because they have been part of the story of our company from the beginning. One of the things that we did about a year into our business, or a year and a half, when we launched our first own line of weaving yarn, is we had pre orders, and we invited people to invest in a product line that was going to be six or seven months later. And people were really excited to do that. And we were really lucky to raise enough money for that.


Felix: How did your community grow because you're transparent about your business?


Sarah: Yeah. I think people are just excited to know what is really happening behind the scenes of a business. You want to buy from people, you don't want to buy from a company. You want to know what their values are, and what kind of quality they're working with. And I think it's as simple as that.


Felix: Now, you had mentioned that one of the skill sets that you had to pick up was about digital marketing. And you said something, I think, really important, which is that you read a lot about digital marketing. And you watched a lot, observed what other companies that you admired, what they were doing. How useful was that? What were you able to get out of doing this kind of research, reading and watching?


Sarah: Oh, I think everything. I mean, because I had no experience in e-commerce, really, I listened to your podcast a lot. I listened to other podcasts, and just hearing people, and really different industries share what they did, and then think, "Oh, we could try something like that for our niche and see if that works." I mean, I don't think that much of this, or at least much that we have done, is extremely hard to figure out or complicated. It's really just thinking about what's going to tempt a customer to want to get on our email list? And where can we find them so we can tempt them? For us, what's been really successful has been creating some guides about weaving, and lots of free patterns for people to download. So that's what can help get people interested in learning about our company. And where we find them is often on Pinterest, and also through Google search.


Felix: Yeah, so that's, I think, a great point about... A couple good points. I want to talk about the first one that you mentioned, which was about listening to what worked for people in different industries. I think the most immediate instinctual approach towards starting businesses is looking at, or maybe even copying, what another company in your space is doing. But you're saying that it was also beneficial to look outside your industry. Do you have any examples you can think of that you found from another industry, or heard about another company, and different industry, or different category that you tried out in yours, and that worked?


Sarah: I don't think it's anything groundbreaking for people who are researching about e-commerce, the things I'm going to say, but really heavily focusing on building our email list, and delivering content that people were excited to open and engage with and purchase from has been my goal from before the company was open was building out that email list. And the strategies that we've used to build out the email list are different kinds of resources, called lead magnets, that people can use. So that's something that people use in lots of industries that I learned from different strategies. We've used different strategies over the years. In the beginning, digital marketing was a big part of it, especially cold prospecting through Pinterest. As our company has grown, I've shifted our resources. We're spending less money as a percentage of our revenue to Facebook, and Pinterest, and the big tech companies, and more towards our own team, and other designers, and to create content And we're basically using content to power our growth. I'd always rather hire someone great to weave a pattern than give money to the big advertising platform. So as much as possible, we're trying to use our content to grow now. I think there's different phases of a business and you can leverage growth in different ways.


Felix: Yeah. Yeah, so one of the things you mentioned that worked for you early on, and I also think that's very accessible to anyone that's just starting businesses, is this idea of these lead magnets. And I think you mentioned almost two types, right? One, you said patterns. So you're actually shipping out, or giving out basically free products. And then also, you mentioned guides, which I'm assuming is a good digital guide, that doesn't cost you any money other than the first time that you had to make it. Can you talk to us about these two different strategies of lead magnets and how they worked?


Sarah: Yeah. So for our community, we sell to weavers. And a weaving pattern is a digital download that shows photos of something you can make, and gives you instructions for how to make it. And then we sell, of course, the yarn to make it with. So we have published many dozens of patterns over the years. And some of those are free and some of those are paid. And free patterns are a big part of what brings people to our site, and helps them learn about us, and trust us before they move on to purchasing from us. So that's one kind. And then the other thing that you mentioned is a guide. So helping people figure out what kind of weaving equipment they want to start with, or helping people figure out... What else do we have? Just learning the technical names of different sizes of weaving yarn. Yeah, basically, we're working to demystify this hobby, craft, and art, and welcome as many people in as we want to.


Felix: Yeah. Now, the interesting thing, when I hear you talk about these lead magnets, was that it sets them up for buying, right? The guides that teach them how to weave these patterns, and then you're selling the products to help them, for them to use those patterns. Now, how did you come up with that kind of strategy about what would make a good lead magnet? What's your strategy these days to continually churn out content that is going to attract your customers?


Sarah: Well, our customers tell us what they want to hear. Luckily, they're in contact with us all the time. They ask us questions about weaving. So technical questions that helps us figure out things to answer. So we hear from our customers. And we also work with some really great writers, who are weavers, and also writers and teachers, and they guest write blogs for our website, and do a really good job of explaining different weaving techniques. So yeah, it's a mix of the really good ideas that they come up with, and the questions that we see coming up again and again through our customer service channels that we use for our blog.


Felix: Yeah, so talk to us about how this works logistically. Once you have an idea for a lead magnet, talk to us about the production of that lead magnet all the way to the point of how do they get it? How do they get into your community to get the lead magnet? Talk to us about that process.


Sarah: Okay. This is one of the things where being a member of your own niche is really helpful. So I would think about, at that point, I had learned to weave seven or eight years earlier. And so I thought about what would have been most helpful for me to know, and the biggest questions I had, and I wrote up some guides. And then, how do we promote the... I promoted those through Pinterest. I think I mentioned a couple times, Pinterest that's been, in the past at least, really good for our niche. And I would run promoted pin campaigns, trying to get people to click into the website. And when they would click in, they could download the guide for free and then we would email them in the future if they wanted to be on our email list. So that is what we did then. And it's totally possible, even if you're just starting out, to do it all by yourself. That's what we did. And now, as our team has grown, our creative director and our ecommerce strategist think through a lot of topics with some of the writers and weavers we work with, and they publish. But again, I would say, at this point, it's really just about answering the questions that our customers have, and then the other benefits to our website traffic arise from that.
Felix: Now, when you were building this email list, was that before you launched the business, before you even had any products to sell? Were you trying to build that email list at that point?


Sarah: Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest pieces of advice I would give to somebody starting out, is to start before you start. And I think I built an Instagram account and a MailChimp, a free MailChimp account before I started and had the newsletter sign up in that Instagram profile. And just started sharing with people what we were going to be doing, and what I was going to be doing, and what was coming. And commenting and engaging with other people in the weaving community. And that happened for about six months. And I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think we had an email list of a couple hundred. I had an email list of a couple hundred people by the time we launched. And as I said, we had a really successful first day. And anybody who's opened a store knows that those first moments of wondering if everything you've been working on is going to come to something, or if you're really making something people want or not, it really can be so validating to have that list upfront, and to have people buy in on the first day, keep you moving along.


Felix: Yeah, and I want to talk about what that looks like today, when people get on your email list. But when you were just getting started for the first time, building that list, gearing for a launch, tell us about that. What do you have to do during a launch? Let's say that you build an email list of hundreds, maybe 1,000 or more, before you launch your business. What should go into launching your business if you have a list like that?


Sarah: I think just telling the story of what you're up to and trying to find the people that are interested in being a part of it. I don't think it's really more complicated than that. At least, it wasn't for what we were working on. I shared photos of the yarn that I was sourcing. I shared stories of where I was sourcing from, and photos of me weaving with it. And I asked people to support and join if they wanted something like this to exist. And they did.


Felix: What kind of content goes out these days you find that has been the most helpful in driving traffic back to the website or even ultimately making purchases?


Sarah: It's really the patterns. So we are lucky to just be working with a really great bunch of weaving pattern designers this year and we have some pattern designers internally on our team, and some externally that we hire as contractors. And they put together beautiful projects that inspire people to want to weave with our yarn. And that is really one of the big things that keeps our sales engine moving.


Felix: Yeah. Definitely talk about the shift from the early days where you were spending more on paid acquisition, to now transitioning to content marketing and investing more in your content production. But let's talk about the early days when you had this Pinterest strategy. And your audience or your customers are on Pinterest, it sounds like it worked really well for you. I know you've shifted since then, but was that a strategy that you would go back and do again if you were to start from scratch?


Sarah: Yeah, I mean, that's a little bit hard to answer because these digital platforms change so quickly. And to be perfectly up front, we're not able to get the same results at the same price on Pinterest that we were four years ago. It's just a lot more expensive than it used to be, and that changes the calculation of how to reach people. So I think, if I were going to do it again four years ago in the same landscape, yeah, it worked well, and I would do it again. If I were launching a company now, and if that's what people listening to this are thinking about, it's really about trying things. I also tried Facebook a lot and couldn't make that work affordably. I also did a lot of just networking with people. That was successful. Am I saying that you should go to Pinterest right now? Maybe, maybe not, depends on your niche and whether that works for you. But just keep trying until something works well, and then keep running that through as long as it works basically.


Felix: Yeah. And given that approach of just trying a bunch of different things, and choosing, or reinvesting back in the things that worked, and pulling back from the things that didn't, it's a very, almost qualitative approach. Is there a methodical aspect of this? How do you know when to try something else? Or when do you know what to try next? Do you have a strategy for that?


Sarah: I mean, I think the methodical part of it all is having a really good sense of your finances. So, this is another thing that's really important very early on in a business, I think, is understanding your cost of goods sold every month, and your profit, and your other expenses. And unless you have big pocket investors, which I did not, you got to stay in the black. You gotta keep having enough money to keep going. So, the methodical part of all of our advertising was always if you're spending more on advertising than you're making in revenue, minus the cost of what you're selling, then you definitely need to scale back. So I look at my numbers every week, sometimes every day, related to expenses and revenue, and keep a close eye on that. And I think it's always good to be trying new things, even if some things are working really well, because things will always ebb and flow, and then you'll have new things that are in the works as older advertising channels may stop working as well. And with all of the changes with privacy updates on Facebook and other platforms, I definitely feel lucky that we don't have all of our eggs in that basket.


Felix: Makes sense. Now, once you start making this shift to, again, investing in your own team, and investing in content production, talk to us about that. What were the initial hires, and what was the vision of the content that you were creating?


Sarah: Yeah, so the first two people I hired, they're both still with us, they're names are LaChaun and Emma. LaChaun was producing a podcast for us. Emma was working with weaving designers to design patterns out of our materials and publishing blog posts. Both LaChaun and Emma were publishing blog posts with the content that they were making. And that really, both of those things at once started to be a game changer and bring our business into the next stage, I would say, of engaging with a lot of people in the community, and having a lot of content that people were just super excited to tune in to. And we've been able to just continue to grow each of those things from there. But definitely that was the best thing we ever did, was to start investing in growing the team and growing the content that we make.


Felix: Yeah, and you shared some of your numbers with us. And it's a pretty crazy growth over the last year. Talk to us about that. How fast has the business grown since you've basically gone full time with it?
Sarah: We have a little less than doubled every year. I don't think we're going to do that this year. I think we're still growing, but I think our growth is going to slow quite a bit, which is normal, healthy, and fine. I'm not trying to run a global domination yarn company. I want to run a business that I'm really proud of with materials I'm proud of, and make a work environment that we're all excited to work in. And some growth is necessary for that. Yeah, I mean, last year, in 2020, a lot of people were staying home, obviously, to be safe, and it brought a lot of new people into weaving and crafts. And so we were honored to be part of people's at home journeys. And we shipped a lot of yarn as people were staying home last year. So...


Felix: Now, one of the things you had mentioned was about how important it is to build this community. And you mention your email list is an aspect of that. Talk to us about what, I guess, what community means to you. So an email list, something that someone can have, but what makes an email list, or what makes a list become a community? What aspects of it did you try to focus on to make sure that it becomes a community?
Sarah: That's a really good question, because that's definitely a word that's thrown around a lot, and there's different layers of the community. I think part of being a community is in what we do, is being in contact with a number of people who are teaching this craft of weaving, being in touch with a number of the mills and vendors who are making yarn for this community, weaver's who were designing for it. So there's different ways, and some of them are jobs, and some of them are hobbies that people engage with. And so it's just being part of those conversations, and having real honest and growing relationships with lots of people. And we use our Instagram channel and Facebook channel. We try to open up conversations. And on our podcast, we've hosted a lot of conversations about weaving, the history of weaving and textiles, the way weaving and textiles are part of contemporary movements for political change. We really take a big picture look at art and textiles in the way we think about community on that podcast. So there's different layers, I guess, is the long way of answering a short question. That's how I think about it.


Felix: Yeah, awesome. And one of the biggest advantages that you have is around having this community, having this list is how you do the pre orders. So talk to us about that. What is your pre order strategy? And how does having that community, having that email list help with all of that?


Sarah: Yeah, so when we started out, we were just buying yarn that other people were making, and selling it at wholesale prices, and then selling it at retail. And about a year and a half into it, we decided to launch our first line of in house weaving yarn. And that is just a much bigger financial commitment. I went from ordering 50 to 100 pounds of yarn, to looking at needing to order 2,000 pounds of yarn. And so there's obviously much bigger associated costs for that, and costs for storing all of that yarn. And so, I knew that I wanted to do this. I knew that I had a strong hunch that our customers would love it. And I also knew that I did not have the cash to pay that up front. So the options were to not make a big leap like that, or to put it on a credit card maybe, or maybe try to find a bank that would loan us money, but that was probably not going to happen one year into our business.
Or to try to get our customers to invest in us. And so that is what we decided to do.And we shared about this first line of yarn we were making, and what was in it, and the colors we are planning to make. And we asked if people would be willing to pre order it and help get this new line of yarn off the ground. And I was just blown away by the support that our community gave us. And we raised enough money to fully fund the milling of that first batch of yarn, and that really got us going. And since then, as we've launched new lines of yarn, we've used that pre order model again. And anybody who is running a rapidly growing inventory based business knows that getting ahead of cash for new product lines that have a significant investment, it can just be so hard to catch up, and have the cash flow that you need to launch something new that's expensive. And pre-orders have let us do that. Basically, it's our customers investing in us and getting yarn back.


Felix: Yeah, and what's the product development process, where if you have an idea, or maybe before then, how do you even come up with new ideas or new products that you want to release? Is there some kind of testing that's involved? How do you know, whether it be a line of yarn, or new products that you want to offer, how do you make sure that it is something that your customers want before you invest into it?


Sarah: We do a lot of testing. Members of our team will weave with it. Sometimes we will send it out to customers or other people in the industry and have them give their honest feedback on it as it develops. That's for the base yarn. And then, we'll also think through as a team what color lines we think would go with the yarn. So there's definitely a lot of testing, and then there's also some amount of guessing and hoping that you make what people will want. And being as close to your customers as possible, I think, is the best way to guess right as often as possible.


Felix: Yeah, you had mentioned too, now that you made this transition into manufacturing your own products, what else did you learn along the way? You mentioned that there was a reselling aspect of business at first, and to now, manufacturing your own. If someone wants to make that kind of transition, obviously, it's different in each industry. What did you have to get right though in order for you to make this big leap?


Sarah: Well, I think you have to learn a lot about manufacturing, which I knew some about, some kinds of manufacturing, but not much of anything about yarn manufacturing. So just a lot of humility, and doing a lot of research, and not being afraid to ask questions of the manufacturing partners that you're working with. So I think it's a big learning curve to learn how to work well with a manufacturer. And it's also, I mean, one of my favorite parts of my job is learning about and getting to partner with the really wonderful people who create high quality products. So, I love sourcing, and I love making new products. It's stressful, obviously, but it's also just a huge learning opportunity.


Felix: Awesome. Now we'll talk a little bit about the website, the design, a lot of great photography on his website. Talk to us about what went into creating the website as it exists today.


Sarah: Oh, yeah. So we did, I'm talking in June of 2021, we started a rebranding, refreshing, and rebranding, and redesigning website process in July of last year. We worked with a really amazing designer, named Maggie Putnam, who developed a new refreshed brand identity for us. Our first brand, I made our logo in Photoshop and I'm no graphic designer. So she created a beautiful new logo for us, and she really worked deeply with our team and our stakeholders to understand our brand and design, and updated a new version for us to use. So that was the visual end of things. In terms of photography, our creative director, Emma, worked with two really amazing photographers who have ongoing relationships with the lifestyle and product shots on our website. And we rebuilt, we used the turbo theme. We did some custom development for some kit bundling, we worked with developers for that. And we also built a lot of it in house, just figuring it out. I mean, the Shopify platform is really great for that. You can do a lot without having a ton of technical knowledge. So...


Felix: Yeah, this process of developing a brand identity, what goes into creating a brand identity? You mentioned that you worked with some experts on this, but what do you have to bring to the table, I guess, as an owner to help develop that brand identity?


Sarah: Well, it depends who you work with. The person who we worked with, who maybe you can link to in the show notes, she's really just exceptional. Her name is Maggie Putnam. She wanted to understand a lot about the values of our business. She wanted to understand a lot about where we had come from and where we were headed, about the opportunities and the concerns that we had about rebranding. So it was just way, way deeper than, I think, I expected going into it, which would maybe be like, "Oh, these seem like some good colors for a company like yours. And let's go with these fonts." And it came out with... Yeah. What she came out with many months ago, I think it was a six month process, six months later, really well reflects our brand and has been... It's just allowed our creative teal to really run with that brand, and continue developing what we do like that.


Felix: Yeah. And when you began this journey back in July of 2020, what was the goal? What made you decide, "This is something we should invest our resources into?"


Sarah: Our company had really outgrown our brand identity. We were making these really beautiful yarn. And designers were making these beautiful pieces with our yarn. And it just didn't all fit together visually. And we're an arts and crafts company, so aesthetics are just so important. We knew we needed something new. I don't really know how else to put it. I think probably, we needed something new even earlier, but this was when we could afford to take the leap.


Felix: Yeah, and when you look at your website these days, what do you think is the most important aspect, or even important pages of the website that you think are most important for... That has helped the most, I guess, in building up the business?


Sarah: Well, specific to our website, I would say the patterns and the collections of those, and also the resources about weaving. I think a really good page is really important, so people can understand the story and people behind the company. And I guess this is obvious, but the homepage. You want people to land on and just feel like, "Oh, I want to hang out with these people. I want to just settle in and see what's up here."


Felix: Makes sense. Now one of the interesting things about your email signup is that you ask for more details than what you would typically see on any other kind of signup, email signup page. You ask what type of weaving are you interested in? And also a birthday. What was the decision behind adding those additional pieces of information that you're requesting?


Sarah: Yeah, so Suzie, who set these up, has been testing lots of different kinds of popups. And this has been the most successful one for us so far. But we love using Klaviyo to test different creative and different options for pop-ups. And we ask about different kinds of weaving because we intend to segment our lists based on that in the future. And we ask about birthdays because we send you a present on your birthday.


Felix: Awesome. So you mention Klaviyo as what you use for email.


Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative).


Felix: Are there any other apps that you use or that you rely on that you recommend for other people to check out?


Sarah: Yeah. This is specific to our site, but we use I think it's called Boost Product Filter and Search. And if you have a large catalog and you want to have people be able to sort it by drop-down menus, we love that app. And it also has a really good search component as well. What other apps? I mean, like most stores, we use too many apps. But chat is a good one. We like talking with our customers.


Felix: Awesome. Yeah, so the website is gistyarn, G-I-S-T Y-A-R-N, .com. And I'll leave this last question. What has been the biggest lesson that you've learned over the last year that you want to apply moving forwards?


Sarah: I think the biggest lesson is about our team. We transitioned to all working remotely with the start of the pandemic and we, over the course of the pandemic, also hired people who are not even local to us, so we couldn't work together physically in the future. And I've just been so impressed at the flexibility that the other four women on my team have to just roll with everything, and really build a sense of community and camaraderie on our team through Zoom, and Slack, and all of these digital channels. So what I've learned is that a lot of the ways that I thought about work are changing, but it's still really important to make a work environment for your team that feels just nurturing, and challenging, and creative. So keeping that top of mind while operating in a new format is something I've been learning about and still have a lot to learn.


Felix: Awesome. So again gistyarn.com is the website. You also have a podcast for all of our podcast listeners out there, called Weave. Real quick, what is it about?


Sarah: We interview artists, and mill owners, and farmers, and all sorts of people that relate to weaving and textiles, and talk about the threads that bind us together.


Felix: Awesome thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience, Sarah.


Sarah: Thank you, Felix. It was great talking to you.