Workshops
Stitching together your small business strategy with Carmen Schmidt of A Yarn Story & Walcot Yarns
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Whether you're just starting out or looking to take some big steps towards expanding your small business, this presentation will cover the importance of understanding your audience, setting a flexible strategy, and utilising social media and marketing resources to grow your audience.
About Carmen
Carmen is the owner and founder of A Yarn Story, Walcot Yarns, Events Unwound, and Octagon Distribution. Born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, Carmen went to uni in California before leaping across the pond to Europe where she first made Germany her home. She then headed to Ireland where she found her love of knitting, before eventually settling in Bath.Her earliest memory of yarn involved creating endless i-cords with her French knitting dolly, as well as weaving rugs for her doll’s house, and winding and re-winding yarn on her Mom's ball-winder. To this day, Carmen is still a ‘product knitter’, and loves creating everything from socks and shawls to mitts, hats and sweaters – as long as it is beautiful, useful and full of colour.
Armed with an MBA from Goethe Business School and heavily influenced by her parents who ran a successful restaurant, Carmen combined her business brain with her passion for yarn to launch A Yarn Story in 2014… and has never looked back! She says of her love of knitting, “With yarn you can take that string you love and turn it into whatever you want – absolutely whatever you heart desires.”
Design for Accessibility with Elspeth Watson
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What can your business do to be more accessible and reach a more diverse audience. Elspeth Watson is here to help with design tips and watch-outs to help you create an experience where users with disabilities feel like they belong, rather than excluded.
About Elspeth
Elspeth is an accessible designer, speaker and researcher. She is currently working as a freelance designer in partnership with Open Inclusion.
Her goal is to educate people on simple ways to make people with disabilities feel more included though design, without losing the fun.
She believes that by sharing the problem we can collectively come up with a better solutions and looks forward to discussing ways to make the fibre industry more accessible for everyone.
Customer Service to Serve Your Business with Lisa Sisk of This is Knit
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We all know that running a successful yarn business (whether you’re a LYS, hand-dyer, or larger yarn brand) customer service is the key to success. In her talk, Lisa Sisk brings us practical customer relations strategies to improve your bottom line.
About Lisa
Lisa Sisk has run This is Knit in Dublin together with her Mum Jacqui for over sixteen years. In that time they have grown their yarn shop from a small market stall to a city centre store in an upmarket shopping centre, located just 5 minutes from Grafton Street. They have also built a vibrant and supportive community around their online and bricks and mortar operations, thanks primarily to the stellar customer service offered by all the This is Knit team. The business also comprises "Townhouse Yarns", hand dyed by Lisa's sister Jenny, a range that is available for wholesale to independent yarn shops around the world.
Lisa's customer service experience spans many years, right back to her first part time job during her school days. She credits early managers in bar, restaurant and hotel roles for instilling a core understanding of how vital customer relations are to any business, large or small. She's now keen to pass on the benefit of those years of experience to other independent retailers, and to help them create store policies and procedures that will benefit not only their customers, but also their business as a whole.
Let's talk SEO, a website essential for long term growth with Aime Cox-Tennant of Studio Cotton
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Help your website rank more highly and more often with search engines like Google.
About Aime & Studio Cotton
Studio Cotton is a lovely little web design studio located in the heart of Bristol. We help really ruddy lovely small businesses with wonderful website design. From bespoke website builds through to one-to-one web consultations, we got ya. Oh, and our blog is chocka with free SEO, website design, UX and accessibility advice too.
Trademark & Copyright Basics for the Fibre Industry with Christian Williams of Bevel Law
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Protect your creative content through copyright and learn everything you need to know about respecting the copyright of others’ products and services.
About Christian
Christian Williams is the Founder & Managing Attorney of Bevel Law. She holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School. Prior to founding Bevel, Christian was an associate at Covington & Burling LLP where she represented top pharmaceutical companies and national trade associations.
Christian is on a mission to help businesses and non-profits legally secure what they are building. As an entrepreneur herself, Christian knows what it's like to walk away from the easy road and take a leap of faith - to create something new. Through Bevel, Christian is able to leverage all of her expertise to help passionate, dynamic companies across the country.
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Automating Processes with Melissa Gauge of Spare My Time
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How can you best use technology to optimise your work flow and get the best results?
About Melissa
Melissa Gauge, founder of SpareMyTime, is on a mission to democratise high quality, affordable virtual assistance for entrepreneurs and small businesses, whilst championing truly sustainable, flexible careers. With over 20 years of executive experience in the City and having established her own successful virtual assistance company, she utilises her extensive knowledge to support small businesses in prioritising their time and stepping up to the next level.
Up-Selling: Delighting your Customers and your Bottom Line
Helping your business get more out of your customers, increase sales and have them coming back for more is what up-selling is all about. Making sure your customer has everything they need for their project makes them and your till happy, up-selling isn’t anything to be ashamed of.
Outsourcing 101: How to outsource effectively and see your profits grow
The highest performing entrepreneurs outsource. Or that’s what the research suggests. So what does that mean for you and why should you consider outsourcing virtually? In this webinar we will be discussing:
What is a virtual assistant and what are the benefits?
Why should you consider outsourcing?
How to know when you need outsource?
What tasks should you delegate?
How much will it cost?
How should you choose your VA?
How to get the most of your virtual workforce.
Stitching a social media strategy
Whether you're just starting out with social media or looking to build engagement and conversion, this presentation will cover the importance of understanding your audience, setting a flexible strategy, and measuring social media success. It will also provide recommendations for a selection of free tools to help you along the way.
Introduction
Welcome to Talking Stitches.
Join us for an overview of the weekend and find out a little bit about the brands and speakers involved.