All in the Family

By Daryl Brower

(continued from the May 2008 issue of YMN)

Trendsetter Yarns, Van Nuys, CA
Barry Klein literally grew up in the yarn business. In the early 1970s, at home with two small children, his mother, Myrna Klein, found herself frustrated with the lack of needlepoint shops in her area. Her solution was to start her own shop—in the living room of their California home. As the children got older and more space was needed, Myrna, who’d been designing her own line of canvases with a business partner, decide to relocate the store to a retail space three blocks away.

When Barry says he’s a product of the industry, it’s not just a figure of speech. He and his sister Jeri can’t remember a life without yarn, and both learned to needlepoint at an early age. “I remember being about 6 years old and learning to needlepoint on [famed designer] Elsa Williams’s lap,” he says. When knitting took off in the early 1980s, Myrna added knitting yarn to her retail mix, and all three Kleins learned to knit, chart and design. “We were all very hands-on,” says Barry. “For us it was all about fit and style.”

Despite a lifelong immersion in yarn and needles, Barry didn’t plan on a career in the knitting industry. “I was going to write jingles,” he says. “I wanted to do TV commercials.” By then Myrna and her partner had started a wholesale company called Fantasia. To pay for college, Barry worked as sales rep for Fantasia and for Stacy Charles—a job that proved both lucrative and enjoyable. When he graduated, he decided that the money he was making as a rep and the independence of being his own boss were just too good to give up. By that time, Myrna had split with her partner, so she and Barry began making plans to start their own private label and distribution business. (Jeri, more a fan of needlepoint than knitting, opted not to join them.)

Unlike the more traditional scenario of a company being passed down from parent to child, Barry and Myrna went into business as equal partners. “This was something we started together,” Barry explains. “We were very clear on that from the beginning.” Choosing 1989 as a deadline for their new venture, they wrote up a business plan, began saving money and took a trip to Italy to meet the suppliers with whom Myrna had established relationships over the years. Investing $100,000 each in the business and relying on the goodwill and credit of their European vendors, they launched Trendsetter a year ahead of schedule, in 1988.

Since then, the company has grown in leaps and bounds, something Barry attributes to the philosophy that launched the business from their living room four decades ago. “We know our clients and we give them personal service,” he says. “We know what their desires and needs are, and we address them.” For both Kleins, being in business together couldn’t be better. “This industry is never boring,” says Barry. “Whether economic times are good or bad, there’s always a new season to plan and design for.”

Cascade Yarns, Tukwila, WA
When Bob and Jean Dunbabin say they’re married to the business, they truly mean it. As the owners of Cascade Yarns they’ve worked side by side for 20 years. The two literally stumbled into the yarn business in 1988, when Bob, then a real estate broker, was called in to consult on a commercial property in Canada. “The company had a yarn distribution center just across the border and owed a lot of money to Hayfield [a now-defunct division of Sirdar],” explains Jean. “The owner asked Bob if he’d ever considered getting into the yarn business.” Bob took him up on the offer and became the North American distributor for Hayfield. Jean joined the company a year later when business began growing faster than either of them had expected. At the time, English yarns were a rarity on this side of the Atlantic, and the Dunbabins found themselves in possession of a product that generated a lot of interest—and a little confusion. Jean still remembers the first TNNA show they attended in New York. “No one had ever heard of DK,” laughs Jean. “They kept asking us what it meant.”

When Sirdar abruptly halted production of the Hayfield line a few years later (because of declining sales in Britain, not in the U.S.), the Dunbabins decided not to depend on an outside manufacturer for product and began developing their own private-label yarns.

With the new yarns came new business and an ever-expanding workload. So when their son Rob suggested they hire his wife, Shannon (the two had recently moved west after Rob completed law school at Cornell), Bob and Jean were happy to have the help. “She fit right in,” says Jean. “And though she didn’t knit when they got married, she sure does now.” Not long after getting her feet in the door, Shannon persuaded Rob to give up his law practice and join Cascade as well. “Business was doubling and tripling,” says Jean. “Shannon kept telling him, ‘This is crazy, you have to come in and help out.’”

Hiring outside the family was certainly an option, but Jean points out that bringing a close relative into the business usually ensures a partner with a built-in sense of commitment. “You know you’re hiring someone who shares the same objectives,” she says. “You’re all fully vested in what’s good for the business.”

While there are certainly stresses to working with a spouse day in and day out, a fairly informal family unit does have more flexibility than a strict corporate hierarchy would. “We can make decisions faster,” says Jean. “That lets us adapt to changes in the market very quickly.” Being one’s own boss and bringing the rest of the family on board has other advantages as well. “We’re never at a loss for something to talk about over dinner,” laughs Jean. “For the most part it’s all yarn, all the time.”

Swedish Yarn, Jamestown, NC
As is the case for so many in the business, Per and Elisabeth Sandburg’s entry into the yarn industry was fueled by a hardcore knitting habit. In 1983 the couple and their three young daughters moved to the U.S. from their native Sweden for what was expected to be a two-year stay. They found little fault with their new home, save the lack of Swedish yarns and patterns that Elisabeth, and avid knitter, was accustomed to. So on the annual trip to visit family and friends in Sweden, Elisabeth would stock up on enough yarn and patterns to last her the year. “She’d come back with suitcases filled with yarn,” says Per and Elisabeth’s daughter Ulrika Lange. “And then she’d knit her way through our dance and piano lessons.”

Before long Elisabeth was giving knitting lessons to friends and neighbors. “They all loved the yarns and patterns from Sweden,” recalls Ulrika. “There was nothing like them here at the time.” Her students’ interest got Elisabeth toying with the idea of opening a yarn shop. So on her next visit to Sweden, she approached one of her favorite manufacturers and asked if they’d like to export yarns to her soon-to-be-opened shop in the U.S. “They said they’d love to get into the U.S market,” says Ulrika, “but they wanted to do it on a much larger scale.”

Elisabeth scrapped the plans for a store and focused on becoming a distributor. On her return to North Carolina, she visited the 12 yarn stores in the area and managed to convince 11 of them to order the yarns right away. Exhibiting at trade shows brought more accounts on board, and Swedish Yarn became a booming business. A year later, unable to keep up with the growing demands and orders on her own, Elisabeth convinced Per to quit his job as a chemical engineer and officially join the business.

Though Ulrika and her two sisters learned to knit at an early age, they never gave much thought to what their parents did for a living. “We would play in the boxes on the weekends while my parents worked, and they took us to the trade shows with them,” says Ulrika. “There was just always all this yarn around, but I didn’t really think about what it was all for.” Like her sisters, Ulrika didn’t consider joining the business; she went to college and graduate school and became a genetic counselor. But three years ago she found herself ready for a change. “I called my mother and asked her if Swedish Yarns was hiring,” she says with a laugh. “My parents were a little shocked, I think. But we talked it over and decided it could work.” Ulrika didn’t start her new job alone—her husband, Greg Lange, also joined the company.

“The timing was just right for all of us, says Ulrika. “Greg and I were looking for a change and my parents were at a place in their lives where they were hoping to take some time off. Having us join the business gave them the freedom to do that.” While some might find the idea of working with both parents and spouse daunting, Ulrika has found the path between the personal and professional a smooth one. “I grew up seeing my parents working together, so it’s always seemed very natural to me,” she explains.

She also counts herself lucky to be part of such a personal industry. “The yarn world is small,” she says. “Everyone knows everyone else. You really get to know your customers. You can give my parents an account number and they’ll tell you who the store owner is, what she likes and what she doesn’t.”

When she first began picking up the phone at Swedish Yarn, Ulrika quickly learned that the customers knew a lot about her as well. “I’d explain that I was Elisabeth’s daughter, and they’d say, ‘Oh are you the daughter who just had the baby or the one who lives in North Carolina?’ It was like they knew everything about me.

“That’s what I love about this industry,” she continues. “Everything is personal. It’s just a good place to be.”