Volume 12, Issue 15
Dear Reader,
This year, Fall has played hide and seek in New York City.
One day, it’s warm t-shirt weather; the next, it’s cool sweater weather. By sunset, no matter what the temperature during the day, it’s dramatically cooler requiring a jacket. The one thing we haven’t needed is an umbrella or raincoat since it hasn’t rained for weeks.
I mean warm enough to sneak in another day at the Far Rockaway beach. Despite the 1½ hour subway ride,
it’s a great escape to sit on the beach and listen to the waves. Being in nature allows me to connect with my creativity.
Even during the summer beach season, this stretch of the Far Rockaway Beach was relatively empty since it was under construction by the Army Corps of Engineers to fix issues left by Hurricane Sandy, a project that has taken years.
As a result, there are piles of sand and rocks that look like sets for a sci-fi movie or television show. During the summer, larger than human-sized dump trucks and cranes moved sand to build up the dunes.
Table of Contents
Last weekend, my husband and I headed to Rhinebeck for the annual New York State Sheep and Wool Festival (aka: NYSW). Almost every tree in this part of the Hudson Valley got the memo regarding fall foliage transformation. They dripped yellows, oranges and reds. My husband chose a left window seat on the train up to Poughkeepsie to get the best view of the trees as the train moved along the Hudson.
While the NYSW provides a reason to leave the city, the most important part of the weekend is visiting long-time friends. Since they moved to Rhinebeck, we don’t get to see them very often. The NYSW weekend gives us time to relax and catch up with each other face-to-face.
We were lucky. The weather gods sent us warm weather and sunshine. After lunch on Friday, we strolled across the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, the World’s Longest Elevated Pedestrian Bridge. As we crossed the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie to Highland, New York, we saw great views of the Hudson in both directions.
View from the walkway over the Hudson
Actionable Life Lessons
- Schedule time to spend with your family and friends in-person.
During Covid, many of us huddled in our homes and pods only seeing those closest to us. As a result, we have forgoten how to reach out and schedule time to spend with friends and family beyond our inner circles. Once you stretch those unused muscles, you realize how important these once-everyday activities enrich our lives. - Take advantage of local events. In addition to getting out of your house and your regular routine, they’re a great excuse to reach out to your family and friends to get together. To find out about these events, sign up for emails from local media, libraries, museums, and theaters. Also, check out MeetUp for activities that interest you.
► Small Business Marketing
How To Get The Most Out Of Events To Build Your Business
As you may know, I’m an avid knitter. For me, knitting is more than a hobby. This passion enhances my life beyond the craft of making things with two pointy sticks and a ball of yarn.
I regularly attend the New York Sheep and Wool Festival (aka: NYSW). On the third weekend in October, knitters, crocheters, spinners, dyers, and fiber-producing livestock raisers from the northeast and beyond converge on the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, NY.
Heidi Cohen at the 2024 New York Sheep and Wool FestivalFor many fiber fans like me, Rhinebeck, as it’s affectionately known, is a part of their annual plans. They make plans to attend the Festival months in advance. They figure out their transportation and lodging for those like us who make a weekend of the event. This year, my husband and I met people who had traveled from as far as New Mexico and Texas.
Local Small Business Marketing Tip
- Attract Festival attendees to your local business. Take advantage of Festival attendees who spend time in your vicinity. Your options include dressing up your shop window to attract attendees, adjusting your retail hours to accommodate post-Festival shopping, and/or making a special offer to Festival ticket holders.
How To Grow Your Small Business In Person
Over the years, the NYSW Festival has evolved and grown. The Festival provides a central location for a wide range of sellers to merchandise their products to end customers. While the major focus of the Festival is on everything yarn and fiber related products, sales of livestock and food are also important product categories.
From a marketing perspective, these merchants benefit by having a sales presence where people interested in fiber-related products congregate.
Why?
Because many people attend the Rhinebeck Festival with the intention of opening their wallets to spend money and to have a good time doing so.
The small businesses that rent booths at the NYSW don’t have to find and attract new prospects.
A targeted group of potential buyers have paid the entrance fee to spend the day examining the different product options to determine what they want to buy.
For many attendees, the first stop is the NYSW Store since it’s a symbol that they attended the festival.
It sells merchandise such as knitting bags, hats and t-shirts with the special Festival logo on them. Often this line is longer than the line to the Women’s Room at lunchtime!
Many crafts attendees have their favorite purveyors of yarn and fiber. Fiber festivals like the NYSW provide opportunities to get yarns made from specific species of sheep as well as other types of fiber.
Among my favorite yarn vendors are:
- Fiber Optics. Kimber Baldwin, an Ohio-based dyer, offers rich colored luxury yarns and fibers. Also, Fiber Optics curates kits containing a variety of different colored yarn to make specific patterns. Visit this booth if you need a specific color yarn.
- Miss Babs. With a line to pay stretching out of the building, Miss Babs offers a variety of yarn bases consisting of different mixes of fiber and different yarn thicknesses. They’re dyed in mouthwatering colors including a special colorway for the Festival. The Yowza! skeins of a whooping 560 yards of 100% Superwash Merino get a lot of attention.
- Tess Designer Fibers. Unlike its competition, Tess Designer Fibers arranges its offering by color regardless of fiber content or yarn weight. So it stands out as you walk by. For the price of the amazing skein you’ve been petting, get a copy of their paper price listings.
Actionable Marketing Tips
- Determine what makes your product stand out from the competition. Translation: Give potential customers a reason to buy from you. While all three of my favorite yarn purveyors are known for their beautiful yarns, each provides a different reason to buy from them.
- Build relationships with your customers. Want your customers to keep coming back and buying? Then talk to them to find out what they’re looking for. If they’ve bought from you before, how did they like the yarn? When I’ve bought yarn that turned out to be poor quality or had a smell that didn’t go away after washing, I never buy from those merchants again.
- Provide visual examples of your product.
Understand that people have difficulty imagining how your product will look when they take it home and use it. For yarns, make and display samples of patterns using your yarn.
The Rhinebeck Sweater: How To Take Advantage of Real Life Marketing Opportunities For Your Online Business
A tradition associated with the NYSW Festival is making a special fiber-based outfit to wear to the event, affectionately known as “The Rhinebeck Sweater”. Many knitters and crocheters use materials they purchased at the previous year’s festival to create their special sweater.
Andrea Mowry’s Framed Sweater took advantage of the marketing opportunity offered by the NYSW without paying for a booth. Her design was this year’s most popular Rhinebeck Sweater and I spotted many variations at the Festival. Under the pattern’s “Detail” section on Ravelry, a fiber-focused social media site, her copywriting helped increase the pattern’s popularity:
“Framed by a bold hem, neckline and cuffs, this year’s Rhinebeck sweater celebrates traditional handcrafts in a modern pullover.”
As a savvy knitwear designer, Andrea Mowry has built her business, Drea Renee Knits, using her Ravelry following. Over the years, Mowry has designed some of the best-known patterns for shawls, sweaters and other knitwear on the site.
For example, her “Find Your Fade” shawl has 12.1k projects to date and the pattern currently costs $8.00. Published in December 2016, knitters continue to make this shawl since Ravelry has projects completed this month.
Actionable Marketing Tips
- Take advantage of every opportunity to grow your email list.
Mowry adds a highlighted box to get knitters interested in her patterns to sign up for her email newsletter. Note that she gives them an incentive—a discount on the first pattern they purchase.
- Provide educational information to support your product.
Mowry created videos (available on YouTube) to explain new or difficult knitting techniques. To date, she has 87.4k subscriber on YouTube and 2.9k views of this video
In addition, Mowry created a PDF for knitters who wanted to use yarns different from the ones she used in the pattern.
- Support your community. Mowry created a “2024 Rhinebeck Framed KAL”.
A Knit Along (aka: KAL) is a group activity where participants knit the same project at the same time. They follow the rules set by the designer on a Ravelry. The KAL community board allows members to communicate with others and get pattern-related questions answered.Mowry gamified this KAL by adding prizes and a meetup at the Festival. Participants also showcased photos of their work on their Ravelry Project Pages and on Instagram using the hashtag #RhinebeckFramedKAL.
► Voting
How To Make Marketing Decisions With Your Feet
As I’ve written before, political elections are a special form of marketing. In this year’s US Presidential election, they involve large investments to promote candidates at every level of government.
While early voting has started in many states, candidates continue to run ads across different media and platforms. Like other forms of marketing where getting a customer to buy and pay for your product is challenging, the most difficult aspect of political marketing is getting registered voters to physically go to the polls and cast their vote.
Despite being a right that distinguishes democracies like the United States, a large number of people don’t vote for a variety of reasons.
I believe voting is an important right and responsibility of being an American citizen.
So, I take it seriously by doing my research about the candidates and issues on my ballot and making plans to vote early.
Actionable Voting Tip
- Please take the time to educate yourself about your specific voting options, find your polling location, and cast your vote on or before next Tuesday, November 5th.
Thank you for your attention and continued readership. It means a lot to me.
Happy Marketing,
Heidi
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