In this webinar, David Allen of Allen Manufacturing in Lewiston, Maine will explain all of the steps you need to have a product manufactured. David specializes in working with small businesses and will walk us through sourcing, creating prototypes, costs, minimums, and turnaround times, and protecting your intellectual property.
Hold on to your supplies, whether needles and thread, yarn, fabric, or templates. The supply chain bottleneck means getting necessary tools and stock is taking longer than before.
Etsy shops selling customized mugs, apparel, and other items are all the rage. The popular technique called sublimation or heat press printing is behind it all. Learn how it works.
A combination of increased demand, shipping delays, and the labor shortage coming out of the pandemic is causing craft companies to struggle with product delivery delays.
The world-renowned Austrian crystal manufacturer, Swarovski, recently announced it will soon no longer manufacture crystals for the DIY market, leaving retailers and designers scrambling to find worthy replacements for these top-of-the-line components.
Threadymade is a new craft kit company that provides pre-pleated and smocked fabrics for garment sewing at home
A round-up of laser-cutting services for quilting templates, acrylic rulers, or tags and other unique products to promote your business along with tips for working with laser cutting services.
Representatives of a cross section of the European craft industry to weigh in on what changes they have seen in their business this year, and what trends they foresee for 2021.
African wax prints are fabrics with a complex and nuanced history and, although they’re trending on the fashion runways, some consumers question whether wearing these garments is cultural appropriation.
Industrious and creative young people in Zimbabwe are upcycling metal scraps into intricate artworks and finding a market for them abroad, providing economic opportunity which is hard to come by in the current economy.
A new “15 Percent Pledge” calls for major retailers to pledge 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Will craft industry retailers take action?
This year, Clothworks is celebrating its one-millionth yard of American Made Brand fabric, quilting cotton that’s manufactured entirely in the United States.
Coronavirus is impacting the supply chain for craft businesses large and small due to factory quarantines and closures plus shipping delays in China.
Selling gift cards can help you boost your holiday sales. They’re the ideal last-minute gift and shoppers with a gift card tend to spend more than they would have otherwise. Read these tips to add gift cards to your product mix this year.
Selling gift cards in your shop can be a great way to boost sales, but be aware of these legal issues before you dive in.
Spoonflower is a print-on-demand service that allows you to create your own design, upload it, and print it on fabric, wallpaper, and gift wrap. Designers have the option to sell their unique surface patterns on the Spoonflower Marketplace and receive a small percentage of each sale. The key to selling anything online is getting found and the same is true of the Spoonflower Marketplace. Use the tips to optimize your listings so that you can make the most of this platform.
At the end of January the Italian premium thread brand, Aurifil, announced a partnership with The Plastic Bank, a social enterprise based in Canada that aims to clean up plastic waste from the ocean while providing work opportunities for people living in poverty. Most weights of Aurifil threads currently come wound on plastic spools.
Fabric company RJR notified retailers of a minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policy that will go into effect for Cotton+Steel.
Does your small business need to order a lot of fabric on a regular basis? If you’re running sewing school, small batch production studio, costume shop, or another sort of business that requires many yards of fabric come through your doors month after month, a bulk discount program could dramatically reduce your costs.
JOANN+ is a new business-to-business initiative from JOANN that aims to help small businesses, organizations, and solo entrepreneurs.
Craft Industry Alliance is excited to have Darice join us as a corporate member. Darice is a premier manufacturer and wholesale distributor to the crafts industry that carries more than 45,000 products.