New Year, New Website!
So, last year was a bit of a bastard really, wasn't it?
Aside from being particularly unpleasant because of Covid, it really was an eye opener for me in terms of what I do as Sable Yarns. In the past, I attended a lot of yarn shows and the majority of my sales came from those. In 2020, however, all my physical yarn shows were cancelled (apart from the lovely Pop Up Wool which just had sweet sweet timing and managed to run in August).
Luckily, a LOT of the shows I was booked to attend turned their efforts to running as virtual events. This meant staying at home, putting the stall up in my front room (and then later my bedroom so I could have it behind closed doors because KITTENS), scaring myself shitless doing Instagram and Facebook lives, and then biting my nails hoping everyone would ignore the terrible lighting in my tiny dark little cottage and head over to my Etsy shop to buy my yarn.
Thankfully a lot of you did do just that, which suddenly made me realise just how much Etsy were charging me. It's a LOT, let me tell you. You don't notice it so much when most of your sales are done in person. When you're doing physical yarn festivals all year, your efforts are concentrated on keeping your travelling costs down to a minimum (which means doing a lot of driving early in the morning and late at night to reduce hotel bills). But when that all flips around it really makes you think. Which is why it's time for me and Etsy to go our separate ways.
Splitting up is a scary thing to do. Etsy has been there to hold my hand while I built my tiny little business up, and I worry that I'll miss out on lots of sales because people won't find me out here in the ether now I'm on my own. But I think I drive most of my sales via the shows and social media. There's only one way to find out anyway............ So here I am, with my own website! Please please let me know if you have any issues at all reading and navigating it as it's all very new and can be changed if it's causing any problems to anyone.
If you're reading this you've found me, so that bit worked! Thank you so much for supporting me so far, please carry on doing so - a like or a mention or a share on Instagram or Facebook go a long way to driving customers in my direction and every little thing you do helps tremendously.
Hopefully 2021 will improve and we'll all get to see each other in person at some point. That would be nice. I'm not a people person particularly, but even I miss people, so it must be bad. In the meantime, I'm running a sale until the end of February to celebrate the new website, so please take time to look around and maybe treat yourself, or a friend, or just share with your friends so that maybe they do the same.
If you made it this far, thanks for listening!
Jill xx