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I've been asked about yarn bowls a couple of times, even tried to make a few, though I didn't quite get it right--need to have the thread hole open up to the rim so you can take the yarn out while the project is still in process. Hey, not a knitter/crochetist. I didn't know.
Last Saturday, I was approached at Market with a potential business offer. The woman in question was starting a fiber arts distributorship, a business that sources products and then wholesales them to fiber stores. She wanted to know if I'd ever made yarn bowls. I gave her the digest-sized version of the story, and she asked if I'd be interested in making them for her business. I said I'd think about it.
This is me, thinking.
They're not hard to throw. Punching a hole and cutting a spiral slot to the rim isn't much harder, though it makes them kinda fragile to bisque. I'm not sure how likely they are to warp or deform in the glaze firing, I'd have to make a few to test. I think my initial attempts might have been a little big; a two-pound bowl would be about right. She thought the cat chasing the yarn pattern was cute, and also thought ewe and lamb would be nice.
So I could do them. Should I?
I did a little research. (Well, I searched etsy.) I found yarn bowls ranging in price from $15 to $60, with the median being about $40. Some were elaborate, some simple, some butt-ugly (and while elaborate correlated to higher price range, ugly did not necessarily mean lower). I'd probably suggest a retail price around $42. Is that reasonable? Sellable?
Then there's the issue of what my share would be. Standard wholesale is 50% of retail (used to be 60%, but times change), but this isn't standard wholesale. What's the distributer's cut?
And then there's quantity. How many is she likely to want. How many can she sell? This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, like the woman who wanted me to wholesale animal banks to Japan. There isn't anything like the labor involved with yarn bowls. But I'm still a one-man shop, with most of my income from retail sales, where I need a wide variety of product. I can't spend too much of my production time on one product.
Of course timing will be a factor there. Fifty yarn bowls in February is a huge difference from fifty yarn bowls in, oh, November. One is slack season, the other right in the bulls-eye of the Holiday rush.
Think I'll have to dig up my file on wholesale orders--minimum purchase, timing, delivery and payment schedules--and send her a follow-up email. She's just in the process of starting the business, so we'll see what spins out.
Last Saturday, I was approached at Market with a potential business offer. The woman in question was starting a fiber arts distributorship, a business that sources products and then wholesales them to fiber stores. She wanted to know if I'd ever made yarn bowls. I gave her the digest-sized version of the story, and she asked if I'd be interested in making them for her business. I said I'd think about it.
This is me, thinking.
They're not hard to throw. Punching a hole and cutting a spiral slot to the rim isn't much harder, though it makes them kinda fragile to bisque. I'm not sure how likely they are to warp or deform in the glaze firing, I'd have to make a few to test. I think my initial attempts might have been a little big; a two-pound bowl would be about right. She thought the cat chasing the yarn pattern was cute, and also thought ewe and lamb would be nice.
So I could do them. Should I?
I did a little research. (Well, I searched etsy.) I found yarn bowls ranging in price from $15 to $60, with the median being about $40. Some were elaborate, some simple, some butt-ugly (and while elaborate correlated to higher price range, ugly did not necessarily mean lower). I'd probably suggest a retail price around $42. Is that reasonable? Sellable?
Then there's the issue of what my share would be. Standard wholesale is 50% of retail (used to be 60%, but times change), but this isn't standard wholesale. What's the distributer's cut?
And then there's quantity. How many is she likely to want. How many can she sell? This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, like the woman who wanted me to wholesale animal banks to Japan. There isn't anything like the labor involved with yarn bowls. But I'm still a one-man shop, with most of my income from retail sales, where I need a wide variety of product. I can't spend too much of my production time on one product.
Of course timing will be a factor there. Fifty yarn bowls in February is a huge difference from fifty yarn bowls in, oh, November. One is slack season, the other right in the bulls-eye of the Holiday rush.
Think I'll have to dig up my file on wholesale orders--minimum purchase, timing, delivery and payment schedules--and send her a follow-up email. She's just in the process of starting the business, so we'll see what spins out.