Moving Studios and Tripling Inventory 🫢
Our BIGGEST update yet (literally this is huge).
We are 2 months into the new year and although it’s our slow season, things are changing quickly here at Studio LOOSENDS. If you haven’t already heard, we just DOUBLED the size of our studio space in Montreal (which entailed knocking down a whole wall and renovating two spaces). With this expansion, we’re opening a public facing store-front, hiring new staff, and prepping for our largest re-stock to date. So many things that have been brewing for months are finally coming to fruition, and we cannot wait to share them with you, so let’s get right into it.
IT ALL STARTED… back in October. After spending their life savings on yarn, Bennett began preparing for their largest incoming shipment to date. LOOSENDS was entering a new era of growth that required the resources and team to match it.
Enter Naomi, Frances, and Ilana (who you may have already seen on our socials!). Since joining the team in October, everyone’s roles have been in flux, but as of January, we have officially defined everyone’s unique roles, responsibilities, and contributions to LOOSENDS.
Delegating and distributing the workload was definitely a learning curve because LOOSENDS has been Bennett’s solo endeavour for so long. A lot of the content and systems that were intuitive to them, definitely took some time to translate to new people. We have (successfully!) worked to find a flow and a rhythm, officially dividing the workload into roles that suited everyone’s unique skills and interests.
Ilana is (as you may have seen) LOOSENDS’ crochet assistant. Ilana’s primary role is to help Bennett with the production of LOOSENDS bags and collaborate on new designs, but as crafting is a big part of our content strategy, it only felt right to have her join the marketing team as well.
Naomi has adopted a marketing role. She’s been busy creating a marketing strategy and helping to formally define our brand identity, project future campaigns, analyze content performance, run the blog, pitch new ideas, and do general upkeep of all our socials (in collaboration with Bennett).
Frances has taken on the role of shipping, customer service, and studio operations! If you come to shop in person (more to come on this below) you can expect Frances to greet you and answer any questions you have about the products. She also has been instrumental in developing new systems for inventory organization and tracking, record keeping, problem solving, and keeping everything at the studio running smoothly.
As LOOSENDS continues to grow we are focused on establishing systems for future onboarding of new team members (yes, it’s happening!), so that integrating into the world of LOOSENDS is as streamlined as possible. The LOOSENDS team has quadrupled in size in just one year, and we are on track to continue bringing in new hires to lead the new branches of the business that we are currently cooking up… (see below).
You may have heard that we have officially expanded into a new studio space!
With the support of more hands on deck, we have been able to be more ambitious in taking on more, which has included hosting more events. For our Holiday Marché we rented the studio directly next-door to ours to be able to accommodate more vendors and for Bennett, it planted a seed - what if LOOSENDS had a bigger studio? Perhaps even double the size?
With the size of the last yarn re-stock, the studio that once felt so expansive began to feel cramped. Bennett inquired to the building manager about a larger sized unit, to which they replied “would you like to take the vacant unit next door? We can knock down the wall to connect it to the unit you already have”. This felt like a no-brainer. Of course, this type of expansion (literally doubling square footage) comes at a risk, and it was sooner than we anticipated, but as Bennett says, don’t wait for the perfect moment to make the big decisions.
Dive in head first and figure out the rest later.
So here we find ourselves as of February 1st, in a studio DOUBLE the size.
This expansion is extremely exciting as it offers so much more opportunity for LOOSENDS to expand into new avenues. We are already starting to dream up a retail yarn store-front with triple our inventory, a space for workshops and crochet classes, markets, events, creative shoots, and so much more…
We cannot wait to welcome you into this new and improved space. We are working tirelessly to find the optimal layout for all this new square footage which has included a lot of time spent drafting up floor plans, trips to pick-up furniture, and staring at instruction manuals all day to assemble things properly. If you’re curious about the journey, Bennett is documenting the process on youtube!
We especially look forward to getting into the finishing touches and smaller details like sourcing statement pieces from facebook marketplace, finding creative ways to display LOOSENDS Yarn, and decorating the public facing storefront.
To start, we have upgraded our shelves. MANY of you voiced concerns (thank you) regarding the instability of our previous shelving. With the quantity (and therefore weight) of the yarn, we were definitely due for an upgrade to our shelving. We have installed new shelves that are much sturdier, and on wheels, which makes it much easier to reconfigure the space. Not to fret, our old shelves have been repurposed to house shipping boxes and backstock :)
On that note, I am excited to present to you our new shipping corner! We couldn’t be happier to have a dedicated zone for shipping - which is a major part of everyday operations. With more hands working on shipping we knew that establishing a more dedicated zone would be essential to ensure that finding materials was streamlined and simple. This set-up has made everything really clear, with boxes organized and sorted into sizes, and all the materials on deck (rather than having to go back and forth to our storage room)!
Hundreds if not thousands of orders will be packed right here and shipped around the world upon the arrival of our SPRING RESTOCK…keep an eye on our socials, or join The Thread Collective to stay up to date and get early access! This will be our biggest re-stock to date. We have ordered over 8000 balls of yarn (a huge reason for the studio expansion)! We expect a variety of new colours and styles that we cannot wait to share.
We have definitely reached new horizons, ones where we can see even further into the distant future, allowing us to dream even bigger. With this new growth, we are conceptualizing things as expansive as a wholesale program: one that will be able to supply more small businesses with t-shirt yarn. If you have been here since the beginning you might remember Bennett literally making their own t-shirt yarn because it was so difficult to source. As the demand for our patterns increased, the demand for t-shirt yarn grew, and Bennett started to notice how many other people were looking for the same thing.
It feels unbelievable to trace back the seeds of LOOSENDS (Bennett crocheting alone in their room), to see where it brought us (not one but TWO studios, and three staff members).
We have huge plans, this feels like new beginnings.
Our goal is to make t-shirt yarn more accessible, and contribute to growing the fibre arts / crochet community, so we really look forward to assisting in supplying small businesses to stock t-shirt yarn, hosting more in-person events, collaborations with fibre artists and creators, and so much more. The studio parallels this moment of growth, and we cannot wait to see what is ahead.
And of course, thank you to everyone who is joining us on this journey and supporting our mission of making crochet as sustainable as possible.
xx
LE
