I spent last Sunday at the industry trade show run by the Gemmell sisters of Cabin Fever Fame. It's a trade show that caters to the many yarn shops outside the Toronto area. You can see the details here on their website.
Julia Grunau of Patternfish started the day off with a talk to the various store owners about the future of PDF patterns in the retail portion of the industry. It was very interesting to hear the different points of view. Some owners are eager to move their customer towards purchasing their patterns this way and eliminating the amount of work that it takes to handle pattern leaflet sales and others have a client base that is not Internet savvy and feel they need paper patterns to drive yarn sales. Some owners felt that there is a big difference between the urban and rural shops. Some felt it was an issue of the age of their customers. There were also varying opinions on the topic of yarn shops printing patterns for their customers and applying a surcharge for that service. Some saw it as the way of the future and others said that they would never consider offering that option to their customers. Owners varied widely on the issue of having a computer available for customers to use.
I got a ride up with a vendor agent, Mary Pat. She was representing Opal sock yarns and Briggs and Little. I assisted with the setup and end of day packing as way of thanking her for giving me a ride.
I only managed to get 2 pictures before my camera batteries gave out.
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