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Stop Printing Patterns!
Listed under: One Voice
Published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Do you ever take your gripes to the top? Steve Smith of Heaths Country Store wrote this open letter to the heads of the UK's yarn industry
Knitting, over the years, has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Yet, there seems to be one aspect that each of you have ignored – the thing that costs you time and money as well as a good deal of space and waste. It’s in patterns that each of your companies is letting the consumer down. Whenever I get a new yarn I need the pattern support for the customer to be able to do something with it. However, while you are trying to protect your copyright you are missing out on certain advantages that the modern way of purchasing has to offer.
The basic costs of the pattern market are: designs, photo shoots, printing, storage, distribution and waste. From the shop owners perspective patterns are essential; without them we have a hard job selling the wool and vice versa. However, like warehouses, shops have only a limited amount of space to store patterns and therefore can't hope to have a full range, even if they'd like to. If a shop keeps 2,000 patterns in stock they have to loose some ten to 15 feet of space that could be given over to selling more wool. Also, because shops can’t afford to stock every pattern that comes out they miss out on a sale or the customer has to wait until they can get the pattern in stock.
So the solution? Stop printing your patterns! With technology the way it is, it amazes me that none of you have thought to come up with a database of all your patterns that can be printed off by the wool shops and sold to the customers. The customer doesn’t care who produces the pattern, they just want the design they like. This is also true of shop owners. Obviously as a shop owner I don’t want to be paying too much to have a database in my shop. There have been hints from certain wool companies that they will set up this service but the initial investment for us would be the same as paying for our year’s supply of patterns in one lump sum.
What do I want? I want a hard drive that has a PDF file of all the patterns all the companies have, past and present. I want all the patterns to be loaded on each month by memory stick, either by the rep or by post. I want a counter on the system that will tell me how much per month I have to pay each company for the patterns I have printed off.
Basically I want to be able to offer my customers a choice, not just what I think will sell and I want the copyright system to stay in place for the sake of the industry.
The benefits of this system are: no printing cost for the manufacturer; no storage costs; no distribution costs; no wastage. It means patterns would always be in stock; shops will have more space and customers will have more choice. The only way I can see it working is by each company agreeing to take a share in a company set up to do nothing but supply pattern from each of you. This is a time to forget the way things were done and start to think in a new way. If each of you brings out it’s own system some of you won’t survive and shop owners can’t afford to pay every one of you for your own system.
A revolution is coming and you will either lead it or be swept away by it and the copyright laws are the only advantage you have at the moment. That can’t last forever!
The basic costs of the pattern market are: designs, photo shoots, printing, storage, distribution and waste. From the shop owners perspective patterns are essential; without them we have a hard job selling the wool and vice versa. However, like warehouses, shops have only a limited amount of space to store patterns and therefore can't hope to have a full range, even if they'd like to. If a shop keeps 2,000 patterns in stock they have to loose some ten to 15 feet of space that could be given over to selling more wool. Also, because shops can’t afford to stock every pattern that comes out they miss out on a sale or the customer has to wait until they can get the pattern in stock.
So the solution? Stop printing your patterns! With technology the way it is, it amazes me that none of you have thought to come up with a database of all your patterns that can be printed off by the wool shops and sold to the customers. The customer doesn’t care who produces the pattern, they just want the design they like. This is also true of shop owners. Obviously as a shop owner I don’t want to be paying too much to have a database in my shop. There have been hints from certain wool companies that they will set up this service but the initial investment for us would be the same as paying for our year’s supply of patterns in one lump sum.
What do I want? I want a hard drive that has a PDF file of all the patterns all the companies have, past and present. I want all the patterns to be loaded on each month by memory stick, either by the rep or by post. I want a counter on the system that will tell me how much per month I have to pay each company for the patterns I have printed off.
Basically I want to be able to offer my customers a choice, not just what I think will sell and I want the copyright system to stay in place for the sake of the industry.
The benefits of this system are: no printing cost for the manufacturer; no storage costs; no distribution costs; no wastage. It means patterns would always be in stock; shops will have more space and customers will have more choice. The only way I can see it working is by each company agreeing to take a share in a company set up to do nothing but supply pattern from each of you. This is a time to forget the way things were done and start to think in a new way. If each of you brings out it’s own system some of you won’t survive and shop owners can’t afford to pay every one of you for your own system.
A revolution is coming and you will either lead it or be swept away by it and the copyright laws are the only advantage you have at the moment. That can’t last forever!
As a shop owner with the tiniest shop on the planet and very few patterns, I absolutely agree! Great idea - wish I’d thought of it. I’d love to be able to offer my customers more single patterns (as opposed to books) too. I don’t stock much “regular” wool but I would like access to the patterns which match up with the yarns I have, and would happily sell them on behalf of the companies. Times they are a-changin’!
As a craft retailer with 40% of my business from wool, I think this is a great idea. It would not only help the wool suppliers and ourselves but as a wider benefit would be a great method to introduce those customers who are not comfortable with computers to their ease of use.
I have had a discussion in the past with a particular wool company about this method of delivering patterns (you know who you are!) but nothing has ever come of it.
A great place to start would be the UHKCA leaflets as they are supported by the majority of wool suppliers. Come on Wool companies - you know it is the way to go.
Craft patterns of ANY description could, and should, be delivered like this - why keep wasting resources, paper and floor space? Why keep distributing stuff by road that can be downloaded?
People are getting used to having stuff on demand…they scour the internet for free patterns but the success of digital sites show that if they CAN buy good quality stuff, they will.
Not good news for printers, but we all have to rethink how we work in the internet-age and go with it or get left behind.
Great article and not just relevant to knitting patterns!
Adele
Interesting article. We have for last few years been trying to promote this idea in the shops, but perhaps because of the technology knowledge barriers (or fears or costs or ?), it is slow to catch on. Maybe your article will win over a few more.
I also would challenge the notion that everything has to be printed off. Jeesh—if the patterns are set up as digital products in this database, then let the de facto delivery method to the end customer be digital rather than just assuming printed off! How can we change that way of thinking to really take advantage of technology?
Granted that is still a bit of a ways off for much of population, but closer than we might think as people carry around PDA’s and similar small computer devices as ‘standard equipment’.
Jackie E-S / HeartStrings FiberArts