Knitwear design business – keeping income
In the previous blog post, Mindful Knitting, we talked about how the income element of knitting as a business can sap joy from our hobby.
I would be surprised if you didn’t transform knitting into your business because it brings you immense amounts of joy. Sharing knitting patterns is sharing that joy with everybody else. It would suck if creating made you miserable.
Let’s talk about the financial pressure of running a business.
Financial pressure can make life miserable. (Understatement of the century!)
This is especially true if you’ve made income a key metric of success for your business – but we’ll talk about that another time!
There are two positions you could be in. One, you’re just starting out and have no or very few patterns. Two, you have been at this a while but have hit a drought period.
The Newbie Designer
Congratulations! You’ve made the leap. You own a whole business. It may not feel like it, but you do. So now, how do you face the pressure of building a sustainable income.
Community
You’ll hear me banging on about this all of the time! Community is the most important aspect of running your own business. Having a good group of designers, creatives, knitters and even editors (if you’ll have them!) around you is such a huge lifeline. It may not lead to hard cash in your pocket, but it gives you something more than that.
I couldn’t be here doing what I’m doing without having been able to turn to my community of editors and small business owners to vent about the stress of having unreliable income.
As a knitwear designer, just knowing there are other designers out there who have struggled the same way and have come out alright will be a relief. A good community will also give you helpful tips and advice. Other knitwear designers are not your competition! The more knitwear designers there are, the more knitters will find the craft. So don’t feel the fear of competition, lean into the value of community.
Keep your day job
If you have one, your day job will be an anchoring peace of mind as your grow your business. Reliable income from an employed job gives you the freedom to explore adventurous avenues with your knitting that you might not have been able to otherwise.
Take the pressure off your business. This is where not using income as your key metric of success comes into play. Because you might not be able to go full-time knitwear designer straight away, or even within a year. But even before you have built a full-time sustainable income, you are achieving so many thing. We’ll talk about this further in another blog post.
Of course, you may not have a ‘day job’. We all have our own unique circumstances and you have to do what is right and healthy for you.
Pace yourself
Pacing yourself simultaneously means don’t rush it and also get what you can out as quickly as possible. This is a bit contradictory. What I mean is be really intentional with what you design and when.
Ravelry, if you are able to use it, has a section of featured debut pattern designers. When you’re starting out, put a good amount of thought into that first design you release. Make it beautiful, have it capture exactly the type of knitter you want to work on your designs (this is your target market!), choose yarn with care, take an incredible photo. For your first handful of designs, this is the one you should put the most effort into. If it is a wearable, ensure it is test knit by as many knitters as there are sizes. Take your time to create something that is really the best of your abilities.
After that, take the pressure off entirely. You can’t create a masterpiece every single time. This is where the ‘quickly as possible’ element comes into play. Design three or four accessories or homeware patterns. These are great because you need fewer test knitters. You can get the designs through production much quicker than anything with sizes. These will be a great stopgap while you work on your next masterpiece. And who doesn’t love a good sock!
A note on your accessories and homeware: these do still have to be designs. Knitters don’t want to pay for your take on a vanilla hat or for a 2 metre by 2 metre square of stitch dictionary pattern that you’ve called a blanket.
The Seasoned Designer
We all hit drought periods. They can be incredibly stressful, especially when it is your only source of income. But luckily for you, you have a whole catalogue of knitting patterns to fall back on.
Shout about your backlist
Don’t believe the lie that your patterns have a shelf life. There are thousands of knitters who haven’t seen your designs before. I bet there are also thousands who have seen them but didn’t know they loved it until now! I promise you, you won’t annoy anybody.
There are plenty of ways you can go about this. The easiest method is to just recycle your old posts, texts and all. No-one will notice and it will restart a conversation about your older patterns. You could also take fresh new photos and write whole new posts. Tell stories about your design process. Talk about who the knit up design has worn with use. You could even explore what you’d do differently if you were to knit it again!
Rely on your community
I told you I’d bring it up again! In this case, the community that will support you is your knitters. This relates to reviving your backlist. Get your community talking about their favourites of your older patterns.
Again, you can get so creative with this. You could ask knitters to submit pictures of their versions of your patterns. You can showcase these. Keep it super positive. You adoring knitters have supported you, so you should support them! Or you could start discussions on what yarn knitters may have substituted in your patterns or what adjustments they made to suit their bodies and tastes.
Keeping a steady income is incredibly difficult. These are just a few ways that you can create some hype for your patterns in your marketing. What we’re aiming for here is a quick fix to your income flow. The emergency solutions. In a future post, we’ll talk about ways you can create a marketing schedule to encourage a steady flow of income.
