I Started a Yarn Store!

 GUYS I have some amazing news! I started an online yarn shop, Skein Appeal. Why did I start a yarn store? Well keep reading to find out.

It's obvious I LOVE yarn haha and opening a yarn store is something I have been toying with for ages and finally just decided to go for it. It has been in the works for awhile (atleast Sept 2021). I launched the online shop officially on Jan. 12th 2022. I would love to one day own a brick & mortar shop but right now is not the time, between rent prices here in Toronto & Covid. 

My goal with this yarn shop was to be able to stock a variety of yarns that you may not typically find in other yarn shops. I really wanted especially to stock dyers from the US and hopefully even beyond. As a Canadian it is sometimes disheartening when you are yarn shopping online and you go to check out and see the price in US and then you convert it to CAD and your like ohh this is a bit pricey, but you buy it anyways. Then it arrives and you have to pay even more in customs, taxes, and sometimes brokerage fees. It adds up quick let me tell you. Suddenly your maybe $50 US yarn purchase is close to $100CAD or more. By having the product already in Canada you can avoid some of these high fees or at the very least know when you check out what you are paying is it, no unexpected bills when your package arrives!

Now I do still have to pay all the previously mentioned fees, but not as high where I am purchasing the yarn wholesale. That being said I do have to increase the price of each skein by a few dollars to make up for whatever I did have to pay in shipping, taxes & customs. For my current shipment it worked out to be roughly $2 extra per item. So instead of a skein being $34CAD it is $36USD. Now even $34 may seem high at first for a skein, but we Canadians are used to seeing prices in US when we shop, even though when our credit card gets charged it is in CAD, the price on the actual site is what is stuck in our head. So really when you see a $28US skein it is actually $35 CAD! I do ship to both Canada and the US but I have chosen to list my prices in CAD so you know EXACTLY what you are paying.

The other thing I need to do legally is charge taxes on items sold within Canada. Again when we shop on US sites we do not always see that at checkout. Sometimes we do not pay the taxes until it arrives so we do not really think about it. So just as an example if you purchase 1 skein from me you are paying for the yarn in CAD,($34) plus the $2 for the fees I had to pay, tax (13%) so the total for 1 skein is 40.68 plus shipping. Now I know that seems high, but think about what you paid in total last time you ordered full price yarn from the US and convert it to CAD $. 

Shipping is also just expensive and there is not much I can do about that. One thing I will be offering eventually is vacuum shipping, so when you buy 1-2 skeins instead of paying ~$15 for shipping you can pay ~$6, the only thing is this is shipped as oversized letter mail and therefore is not trackable. I have used this service when buying from other yarn shops and never had any issues though. 

I will be carrying some Canadian dyers, but the bulk of my stock will be from the US and hopefully some dyers in the UK. Currently we are carrying Lily & Pine, Knitting after midnight, Yarn over New York & Breaking yarn. 

I hope when you check out the shop you find something you like! If you have any suggestions of dyers you would like me to try and bring in please let me know!