As I sit here in my office, it's 17 disrespectful degrees outside. I've gotten to wear my warmest sweaters multiple times this winter, which definitely doesn't happen every year (NOT complaining about that! I love my sweaters!). I've had to close the shop for two days due to snow and it's only 3 weeks into the new year.
And yet here I am printing out labels and entering product into inventory for Spring and Summer! Yep. I'm sitting here dreaming of the cottons and linens to come!
Inventory is a funny thing. If you're working in the current season, you've fallen behind. I order my Spring yarns in August and my Winter yarns in May. It can be hard to shift your brain into the opposite season mode and think about wool and llama and alpaca while sweat is dripping down your back or linen and viscose when you can't feel your hands because it's so cold, but that's the job, so you do it.
There is a lot of planning involved in stocking a yarn shop. Every quarter I have to sit down with a lot of analytics and figure out what's selling and what's not, and try to figure out why. Sometimes, I really have no idea why one yarn takes off and another stalls. I make educated guesses and order accordingly.
As a newer business, it takes time to fill in all the categories. You can't stock every yarn of every type on day one. I feel like when I opened this shop, I didn't have enough yarn to even call myself a yarn shop, but I had to get the doors open and get some revenue before I could expand my offerings. I'm still working through that list of ALL the yarns, and filling in a little more each season.
It's impossible not to get excited about a bunch of new yarns. I may be a business person, but I'm also a yarn lover, and every new season hits like a truck! It's so much fun to sit down and look through the incoming orders and dream about new projects.
I've got a new traditional fingering weight non-super wash coming, a new dk cotton that's soft as a cloud, a super-fluffy cotton like nothing I've ever seen, a sport weight cotton from a much-beloved British company in the most perfect summer colors, a worsted weight linen that's perfect perfect perfect for summer tees and tanks, and a new handpaint version of my best-selling wool blend, and that's just the stuff that's at the top of my mind right now!
It's the nature of a business owner to always be looking ahead, so I'll keep planning ahead and trying to make this shop the best I can.
But today, I think I'll pick up that Malabrigo Rasta vest that's going to be super cozy for the rest of this unexpectedly cold winter and enjoy being warm and cozy on this sunny, freezing day.
