Knit one, purl one: How Stitch & Story is changing the pattern of the crafting industry

Thursday, 19 August 2021

When Jennifer Lam set up her crafting business 10 years ago, she wanted to make it accessible to all…and to finish the hat she was trying to learn how to knit. Now, Stitch & Story has inspired a whole new generation to take up their needles, with its DIY knitting and crochet kits and online support that can help beginners become confident crafters with ease, and experienced makers expand their skills. We talked to her about the power and personal impact of making and why it’s so important for self-esteem and wellbeing.  

What was the idea behind the business and why was there a need for it? 

We started Stitch & Story 10 years ago, and at that time the craft industry was seen as quite old-fashioned. I was working in publishing back then but being a true millennial, I was overwhelmed and wanted a digital detox. So, I picked up knitting as my go-to destress. It achieved the opposite — the only place I could go to buy things was Hobbycraft, which was an overwhelming experience as a first-time knitter, and I found it so stressful to learn that I failed miserably. My co-founder Jen, who I’d met when we had both been working in a start-up, post-graduation, was one of the only people I knew who knew how to knit. I was quite determined to make this hat, so she helped me, and after I finally managed to do it, I found I had a big feel-good factor. We wondered whether it would be a good idea to share that accomplishment, creativity and perseverance of learning a new skill with other people? So, we started Stitch & Story with the idea to make knitting, crocheting and crafting super easy for new crafters, remove the barriers to creativity and make it inclusive. 

Where did the ‘story’ part come into the business?  

When we started, we had a brand story written for us and that helped to centre our team and also our mission in how we accomplish making crafting accessible. Everyone is on their own creative or craft journey and for their own reasons, and we put empowerment at the heart of our story. We inspire the crafters of tomorrow, and we act as guides to help them going. Previously the experiences of crafters were that they had to learn by themselves or had quite a fragmented experience on the way to learning, but we’re here to pretty much handhold our crafters, whether they’re a beginner or an expert.  

How did you knit the idea together to make it physical? 

We started the business in a typical bootstrap way — we didn't have investment and we both had day jobs, so we built Stitch & Story in the evenings and at weekends. It really all started with workshops, which quickly started being fully subscribed so we realised people were having similar feelings to the ones we’d had. There was demand, but we didn’t have a life anymore and knew that we couldn’t scale this with just two people teaching. That's when we started migrating onto the website with the DIY craft kits, which are essentially a ‘workshop in a bag’. They include the yarns, needles and patterns but also now include all the digital content our crafters need. We grew quickly in the first year, securing Liberty and John Lewis as our first retailers. Since then, we’ve added kits, but also different craft verticals and collaborations to be able to serve what our creators want from a product. Our first collaboration was with baby toy Sophie the Giraffe, and it made sense because often it's the sentimental piece of wanting to make something for a loved one or for a baby shower gift that brings people to crafting. As we went on, we realised that our customers had other interests too, from pop culture to characters like Snoopy and so on — nostalgia in particular is a key theme for our audience.  

What challenges did you come up against when starting up and how did you deal with them? 

There's never a start-up without challenges. It's a steep learning curve, especially in the early days when you're a small team and very much in survival mode, your approach is a bit scruffy, because you just want to try everything and see what sticks. But, more recently as the business has grown, we've taken on investment and the team size has gone from seven to 22 — and I've taken on the mantle of the CEO, a lot more recently. With that come the responsibilities of leading the team but equally, growing it and being very intentional with your priorities, or you can struggle to spin too many plates. Being a CEO of a start-up and a growing company, ‘what you know’ and ‘how it works’ don’t necessarily apply year-on-year. So being able to keep on top of that and keep a growth mindset every day is a challenge — but it's how you take on those challenges and learn from them that is the definition of an entrepreneur for me.  

What do crafts mean to you and what part do they play in a healthy society?  

Everybody is focused on digital and STEM now, which is important in its own way, but recently the focus has become more about STEAM because Arts have been included into it. And that’s so important because the Arts represents something that can't be replaced by tech — the freedom to express. Alongside, people have changed how they are spending their money, from wanting ‘cheap and cheerful’ products to becoming more thoughtful about what they buy. What I've also seen is that when people are shopping they choose objects that reflect themselves. That personal identification piece is accelerated by social media, and crafting resonates so well with that because the way you make a scarf, even if it's a little bit holey, really represents you as the buyer. And as we’ve seen, particularly in the pandemic, there is the wellness case around crafting. Our sales surged during the lockdowns, and it was evident that people wanted something to keep their minds off the stresses of daily life. For me, crafting is also empowering because you're in front of a set of needles and yarns as the maker, and it’s about the process as much as it is saying I've made this; it's the journey that brings about mindfulness. What crafting represents is achievement, because it's not an easy thing. But because focus and perseverance are needed the tendency is that people will stick with it, experiment further and get a confidence boost. And confidence is so important in our world right now, particularly post-pandemic. We want something to be confident about, and creativity is the best place to start.  

What is your vision for Stitch & Story going forward? 

We’re building a brand, and product verticals to empower more and more people to craft as a way of creating something for themselves. I’d love us to be a global player in the arts and crafts industry in time, and hopefully in the same way that LEGO inspires the builders of tomorrow, Stitch & Story can inspire the crafters of tomorrow. We’ll also be continuing to work on our collaborations, and we have two significant ones in the pipeline next year, as well as turning our eyes to the US and some key partnerships to allow us to scale some really exciting stuff.