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| Three queued items, the oldest is from Jan 2015 |
There were a couple of interesting comments on my previous post.
Cassie said:
"Hi Robin, I've noticed a big change in the last couple of years of customer reaction on Ravelry. It used to be when I published a design there would be a surge of sales (and occasionally I'd end up on the hot right now list). But now there is hardly any reaction and low sales. Patterns seem to sell most 2-3 years after publishing, probably after a few projects have been posted to Ravelry."
Cassie's comment is in alignment with what I'm experiencing. There isn't much reaction when I release a pattern. Even though I'm seeing a slow but steady increase in overall pattern sales I don't get very many project pages popping up. I see a lot more sales than those project pages would indicate. Is it possible that knitters see new patterns popping up so fast they pay less attention now?
Renee Anne said:
"I've noticed that, too. Also, people like me that don't have a ton of time to knit wind up making things like Clapotis many years after publication. And then there are designs that I've done that are just sitting in Ravelry, no love....no projects....except mine, of course (because I make prototypes of anything I design because I'm crazy that way). And then, someday, someone makes something and woo!"
This comment made me wonder if the ability to queue patterns keeps knitters going back to older patterns in a way they never did before? In the past you might put a marker in a magazine or book on a pattern but if you put it on a shelf you might not come across that pattern again for a long time. Now with your own online queue you can revisit those patterns more frequently and are reminded which yarn in your stash works with the pattern. I did a little investigation on some of my Ravelry friends pages and I saw lots of projects in their queues. What do you think?
Working in a yarn store, I find that the trigger for me is the yarn. When I'm restocking or receiving a new shipment and a colour strikes my fancy, I will quite often do a search of first my favs and queue and then by the yarn itself to see what others have made with it (checking their project info). Often I will see an older pattern from these searches that will get added to my favs and sometimes my queue (if it isn't already there). So for me, it takes seeing a yarn that I'm interested in or at the very least the same weight in something that someone else has used that often leads me to older patterns.
ReplyDelete~Marilyn
PS That queue photo looks familiar LOL!
You caught me! I thought I should use the queue of someone I know. You popped up when I went to my friends list. BTW I am also driven by yarn most often.
DeleteI think the queue system in Ravelry is partly to....not "blame" exactly but I think you're right about how we can revisit patterns long after they've been published and it's all with a few clicks of a button. Sometimes, it's finding the right yarn for a project. I had seen the Icarus Shawl, for example, multiple times in different weights and it just never really spoke to me. Cue me going to the Madison Knitters' Guild Knit-In a few years ago and Briar Rose Fibers had one in their Wistful base, done on US #6 needles....and lo, I bought the yarn and made it. Granted, I bought too much yarn (I think I have almost 2 full skeins left)...but I'd rather have too much than not enough, especially with small batch dyers.
ReplyDeleteSo, really, the queue system in Ravelry coupled with finding all the yarny things.
Oh, and lack of knitting time, of course.