This is a post about yarn, but don't turn away! It's really about marketing, and a case study in creating a frenzied demand for a commodity product.
In the yarn world, there's an overwhelming movement toward hand-dyed and handspun yarn produced primarily by a lot of 20 and 30 somethings who (seriously) are very counter-culture. It's the whole etsy, handmade, back to nature neo-hippie thing.
So, the marketing genius part. There's a woman in Washington named Stephanie who dyes her own yarn for sale and has a cult following. She's very goth, and her yarn lines are goth-inspired. There's a lot of black plus color striping yarn designed primarily for striped socks, often worn with clunky round-toed shoes.
© RedScathach
(At this point, if you're not a knitter, you probably think I'm making this up. I'm not.)
She has lovely and weird color mixes and soft yarns, but frankly, there are a lot of other yarn designers out there who have similar product. (Don't jump on me, gothsocks people!) But she sells out every run, at a price of $28 per skein. That's one hank of yarn, enough for two socks. And people are lined up begging for any yarn they can get, at prices up to $40.
So she ran a mystery yarn sale last month via etsy. You were limited to two skeins for $25 each, they were seconds, and you had no say in what type or color of yarn you got. The yarn was available for sale at 10 am that day, and so many people logged in to etsy that it couldn't handle the traffic. And she sold out in minutes.
Of course, since I'm writing about it, you can assume I was part of the frenzy. I got my two skeins, one a beautiful, subtle mix of grays and one a pretty garish striping yarn of black, brown, orange and red, and I have a list of people wanting to buy them from me. These are yarns I would not have looked at in a yarn store, but, trend-wagon person that I am, I had to have them. I'm not what you'd call goth, and I don't even like stripey yarn!
This is cool stuff. Stephanie does what she does for love. She makes beautiful yarn, with a clear positioning and attitude, and has an adoring fan base because of it. All power to her. And boy, she knows how to drive demand: keep the product exclusive, make it an event, let your evangelists spread the word.
(Here's her booth at a yarn show - photo by her)
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