Signature Needle Arts

It is hard to believe but today is the 2nd birthday of Signature Needle Arts. We consider that the company was a “premie” on June 18 of 2007. We had been working on the product for many months and learning about retail sales online. That part of the birth of Signature was as arduous as any pregnancy with morning sickness or swelling ankles.

Our plans were to do our first ads in the 25th Anniversary issue of Vogue Knitting magazine in late summer. By that time our website would be up and fully functional. We would have tested procedures to get and ship orders. Everything would go smoothly as we went into our first holiday season.

Like real births things don’t often go as planned. We had a wonderful opportunity to get a lot of fabulous free advertising when the largest paper in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contacted us. They wanted to do a big article on the front page of the Business Section but they had a “space” on June 18 so we couldn’t refuse. What really got attention from people all over the country (from the online version) was that they used one of the photographs of needles and yarn above the name of the paper on the FRONT PAGE. People who never read the Business section checked it out and we were off and running.

Somehow even with our lack of experience in all the details of running a retail operation, doing national advertising, attending our first trade shows everything just “clicked”—and I don’t mean the sound of metal needles! Honestly, nothing could have ever come to pass without the team of people here who were eager to take on the challenge and smart enough to get it to happen.

I know that when actors get an Oscar they all want to thank everyone they know which viewers find boring so I won’t do that except to say that even though customers may come in contact with a few of us there are MANY more people who had a hand in making Signature a success.  People who did mundane and miraculous things to make the needles as great as they are, people who stretched their own talents into new areas and those who cared enough to make every needle perfect. People who tried not to get crazy when Signature was demanding and unreasonable (ok, that was me and not the company)—all of them had a part in getting the needles to you.

I bet that any of you reading this will understand the visceral thrill we have experiences when someone like Clara Parke came up to us at our first Maryland Sheep and Wool and wanted to meet us! Or how fantastic it was when Stephanie Pearl McPhee said, “These needles are, for knitters, like a car person getting a Ferrari…” in her Yarn Harlot Blog. And then there were “famous” people like Cat Bordhi or Beth Casey from Lorna’s Laces or Sheri Berger from Loopy Ewe who were generous in their help and advice not expecting anything in return.

Of course none of the people mentioned so far would be worth a fig without customers. Most of you know that I am a lot older than Signature but I can say without reservation that I am delighted daily with the wonderful emails that come from customers—and, of course, the orders! I really do read all the emails and answer as many as I can myself. The stories of the lives of knitters around the world are beyond belief. So interesting, so accomplished, so creative. Actually I am going to tell you about some of them in the next weeks. You will be astonished at the people in the knitting fellowship.

So thanks to all of you for your part in getting Signature to our 2nd birthday. Just to set any fears aside—no needles were hurt in the making of the needle cake.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.