We’re very excited to invite you to join us for our first (and definitely not last) in-person event. For four years, we’ve been building the Craft Industry Alliance community online and now we’re dipping our toes into building community face-to-face.
For this first event we’ll be meeting up in New York City for a fiber-focused event just a few days before Vogue Knitting Live. We’re thrilled to be working with Craft Industry Alliance member Lisa Chamoff of Indie Untangled to collaborate on the planning of this 1-day event.
Please join us for Business Untangled, an education and networking event for dyers, designers and entrepreneurs in the fiber industry.
Event details
When: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 from 9 am – 6 pm
Where: Here Now, 132 Perry St., 2B, New York, NY
What: Join us for classes on email marketing and photography and a panel discussion covering a wide range of topics related to our industry.
There will be plenty of time set aside for questions, conversation and networking.
The cost of the event is $199 and includes a continental breakfast, a box lunch and a wine and cheese reception in the evening.
Breakout Sessions at Business Untangled
iPhone-ography for Knitters, Makers and Indies
Gale Zucker is a professional photographer and lifelong knitter who often combines those passions, and is the go-to person for capturing knitwear (and sheep!). She has co-authored and photographed for books, including Shear Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, Twenty Patterns and Miles of Yarn, Craft Activism: People, Ideas and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and Drop Dead Easy Knits.
Gale’s class will include tips and tricks for photographing knitting and yarn, plus use of photo editing apps in your phone to make the images sparkle in social media.
Email Marketing with Abby Glassenberg
Abby Glassenberg is a sewing pattern designer, craft book author, writer and teacher. From 2015 to 2019, she sent out her weekly While She Naps newsletter, focusing on the craft industry and creative entrepreneurship, to more than 17,000 subscribers.
In October, four years after co-founding the Craft Industry Alliance trade organization, Abby merged the While She Naps newsletter into the Craft Industry Alliance newsletter, creating a single publication called The Journal.
Abby’s class will cover:
- Why email is effective and why your list is a valuable business asset
- Setting goals for your email strategy
- Considering a variety of newsletter content types
- Creating a workflow that fits into a busy schedule
- Using analytics to fine tune your strategy overtime
- Building your list and keeping it healthy
Panel Discussion: Growing an Indie Business
Lisa Chamoff, a longtime journalist who founded Indie Untangled in 2014, will moderate a panel discussion focusing on all aspects of building and growing a small business in the fiber industry, including:
- Tips on building a wholesale business
- Social media strategy and execution
- Driving website traffic
- Forming relationships with mills and designing custom yarns
- Maintaining mental and physical health while running a small business
- Collaboration over competition: how to build meaningful, beneficial business relationships with others in the field
Meet the Panelists
Mary Annarella
Lyrical Knits
Mary is a prolific knitwear designer who specializes in top-down sweaters with tips for a customized fit, shawls with unique geometric shapes and fun themed mystery knit-a-longs.
Vilasinee Bunnag
Loome
Vilasinee is one of the co-inventors of the Loome tools for creating pompoms, tassels, woven items and more. She is the author of Loome Party, published by Abrams Books.
Pearl Chin
Knitty City
Pearl opened Knitty City on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 2006 and it has become a community hub that offers a wide range of yarns, tools and books for knitting and crochet, with an emphasis on new and emerging talent.
Karida Collins
Neighborhood Fiber Co.
Karida started Neighborhood Fiber Co. more than a decade ago, growing it from a one-woman enterprise to a fully staffed dye studio that creates vibrant colors in a former firehouse in downtown Baltimore.
Heather Love
Hellomello Handspun
Based in Brooklyn, Heather dyes small-batch custom yarn blends sourced from farms in upstate New York. She is also a longtime staffer at Brooklyn General, which specializes in indie-dyed yarns.
This looks amazing! Congrats on this 1st live event. Super fab!
Thank you so much! We’re very excited.
I highly recommend Gale Zucker’s class entitled iPhone-ography. You don’t have to be a fiber artist to appreciate all the tips and tricks she happily shared with me during this hands-on workshop. I’ve taken the workshop and still enjoy discovering the tools and the information that she so generously taught during the class.