How We Choose Our Inventory - Part 1

Written by Cleo (they/she)

A common question we've been getting since we opened our second location is, "what differentiates your two shops?" The quick answer is that we carry entirely different yarns at each of our NYC stores! The juicier answer is in the what, why, and how of the decision to carry each and every skein. So, if you're interested in learning more about how a yarn shop's owner and manager collaborate on what yarns to carry, this is the first of three blog posts we're writing about how we choose our inventory.

Covering the Basics

Every yarn shop should have a wide selection of yarns that covers a variety of:

• fibers (wool, cotton, alpaca, cashmere, silk, etc.)
• weights (how thick the strand of yarn is)
• plies (how the yarn strand is twisted or otherwise constructed)
• dye styles (solid, tonal, variegated, speckled, heathered, etc)
• washability (machine washable, hand wash only, or feltable)

All of these factors combine to make an almost infinite number of combinations possible. There are SO many different yarns out there! And while we strive to cover as many of the different yarns as we can, we can't stock them all.

So when we choose our inventory for both shops, we start with these common yarn weight categories:

• Lace (0)
• Fingering (1)
• Sport (2)
• DK (3)
• Worsted (4)
• Bulky (5)
• Super Bulky (6)

As a basis, we make sure we have at least two different yarns in each weight: one animal fiber, and one plant fiber. We also try to have at least one machine washable yarn in every weight above, and a few different dye and ply styles in each weight. We usually have at least 5 different yarns in each weight, and more than 10–15 in some weights!

Natural vs. Synthetic Fibers

Since we are a natural fiber-focused business, we don't carry any yarns that are majority synthetic fibers. This is a choice I made early on in my business planning due to the environmental damage the synthetic fiber industry causes. Yes, synthetic yarns are typically less expensive, but at what cost to our health and the health of our planet?

So to address the issue of affordability and accessibility I chose to instead look for affordable natural fiber yarns to carry, and set up our Free Library of Craft Supplies (which gets many natural fiber donations).

Categorizing Different Yarns

We also try to carry standard/common types of yarn like:

• sock yarns (machine washable fingering weight wool with a bit of some other strong fiber)
• baby yarns (machine washable sport, DK, and worsted weight wools & cottons)
• colorwork yarns (rustic/non-superwash wools)
• lace weight fuzzy yarns to hold with other yarns (like mohair & brushed alpaca)
• vegan yarns (no animal fibers)
• tweed yarns
• yarns with luxury fibers (cashmere, silk, yak, etc.)

Luckily, there is plenty of overlap between many of these different yarn types. For instance, most plant fiber yarns are naturally machine washable and vegan. A lot of tweed yarns are also on the rustic side, which make them great for colorwork. And most mohair yarns are at least 20% silk which is a luxury fiber.

Since I am a big fan of making lists and spreadsheets, I recently sat down to write up all the hyper specific categories of yarn, and started noting which yarns we already carried fit into which category. Most of our yarns ended up with 3–4 different category tags, and very few only had 1.

After that, I made a note of how many different yarn options I wanted within each category, and at which of our shops. For instance, machine washable worsted weight wools are a pretty popular basic, so I wanted us to have at least 3 different yarns from different brands available at Cleo's, our Bushwick shop. At Rory's, our Ridgewood shop, I wanted to focus more on non-superwash wools so as of right now we only have 1 machine washable worsted weight yarn there. (More on how we split up our inventory between our two shops in Part 3.)

What Our Customers Buy

In the early days of the shop I was really excited about stocking all of my personal favorite yarns, after only a few months I realized I was way more interested in, excited by, and fulfilled by stocking my customers' favorite yarns! (Luckily there was, and still is, plenty of overlap.) But this did skew my inventory in a different direction than I had imagined.

A few demographics have affected what we stock in our original shop in Bushwick. First, many of our customers are local to the area, and this area skews younger. I'd say most of our customers are between 25 and 35 years old.

This means many of our customers are new to yarn crafts, so they're new to shopping for yarn in general. They're also all very fashionable and creative. They're interested in making very unique projects and often don't care about matching the exact yarn and color used in a pattern. And finally, being located in a very expensive city in a very hard-to-afford-anything time has contributed to what yarns people want to buy as well.

All of these factors contribute to our best-selling yarns being the ones that are typically either 1) the less expensive, reliable basics, or 2) the unique show-stoppers. We often see customers going for smaller skeins that cost less than a higher-priced yarn with better yardage, even if it means they have to stop back in for another skein or two to finish their project (see Plymouth Superwash Merino DK, Loopy Mango Dream, and Amano Sami). We also see people going for yarns we sell that are completely unlike anything else we sell (see Yin Yang Worsted, Lang Cloud, and anything from Woolerton Estate Yarns).

Over the shop's first three years I built up a really strong base of the popular basics, covering all the necessary inventory categories I outlined above. So when I promoted Jane to manager, I did so because I knew they were really excited to take on choosing new, fun, unique yarns from small and up-and-coming companies, and that's what the shop needed more of!

Read more about how Jane chooses new yarns for Cleo's Yarn Shop in Bushwick in Part 2.

And the secret third category of yarns that I didn't know what to do with? More on that in Part 3!