Handmade business Three Maine friends find success selling specially-designed knitting kits on the internet

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If we produce knitting kits containing scrumptious yarn and tell knitters clearly how to make the designs, they will buy it.

That was the thought behind the idea for an Internet-based business launched in September by Mary Turner of Bangor, Janet Villiotte of Hampden and Barbara Spyra, formerly of Bangor, who now lives in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The three friends and knitters have spent the last year of their lives building an online business called Spyra Designs.

One of the challenges of establishing the business, Spyra said in a telephone interview from Idaho, is that she lives so far from her two partners.

“I’m not of the computer age,” she said, “so I had to learn a whole new language” in order to post information on the new company’s Web site. “Mary is Internet-savvy, so it just made sense” she said of the decision to begin an online business. “We don’t need retail space and we don’t have a lot of overhead, or need a large financial stake to start a business on the Internet.”

In age, the three partners, Villiotte said, “span the spectrum of middle adulthood,” from thirtysomething to fiftysomething. Spyra has been knitting all her life, Turner is a 20-year veteran of knitting and Villiotte has knit for five years.

“We’re all kindred spirits,” Villiotte said. She and Turner, members of the knitters’ group the Knit Wits for the last four years, meet weekly with 12 to 20 other people to knit for fun.

“I was looking for a yarn store even before my furniture arrived [in Idaho] from Bangor,” Spyra said. She now works at a yarn shop in Coeur d’Alene.

The kits Spyra, Villiotte and Turner design contain yarn, instructions and notions for bags, belts, headgear, scarves, children’s items, home accessories, sweaters and even a bed for a pet. Kit instructions, written clearly and in detail, are printed in a font large enough to read easily.

“Lots of people find it hard to visualize how something will look before they knit it in a certain yarn,” Spyra said. “Our kits do the visualizing for the knitter so she can concentrate on learning a new knitting technique such as increasing or decreasing, or how to read a chart.”

The women test the designs before they are included in the kits.

They also designed the business’s Web site, www.spyradesigns.com – with a bit of help from Turner’s youngest son.

Turner, a special education teacher, Villiotte, a nurse practitioner, and Spyra, an artist, are longtime friends and passionate knitters. They also are level-headed planners. Their first step, after much talk about establishing an online business, was for Villiotte and Turner to attend a seminar, conducted by Eastern Maine Development Corp. in Bangor, about starting a small business.

That seminar, Villiotte said, was essential and helped the three women “walk through all the things we needed to think about to start a business, and to come up with a workable business plan. A business plan is very important. There was a lot of legwork that had to be done first,” she said. “You always have to have the business plan in mind.”

“It helped us to see the variables,” Turner said of having a business plan. “It forces you to expand your ideas. None of us are ‘retail’ people.”

All three women have specific skills in many areas for the fledgling business to draw on.

“Barbara is the creative spark,” Villiotte said. “She’s the one I go to if I need artistic information or advice about [designing or knitting] a piece.”

Villiotte contributes writing skills and a fashion sense to the business.

Turner does trend tracking and some of the technical work of running a computer-based business, such as photo editing and bookkeeping. She’s also good at “trouble-shooting and asking critical questions” about running the business.

“Sometimes Mary functions as our taskmaster,” Villiotte said. When the need arises, Turner keeps the three partners focused on business discussion, reminding them to save for later the pleasant parameters of friendship and talk of family and friends. “She’s our organizational queen.”

Spyra said her knowledge of how to accessorize comes in handy. “I know how to jazz it up,” an asset when choosing yarns and notions for the kits.

Before the design work begins, the women look for yarn to fall in love with, seeking fibers that delight hand and eye, or something unusual such as the chunky crimped coils of handspun, hand-dyed, felted yarn made in Sabattus, a component of the pet bed knitting kit. Many of their kits contain Classic Elite yarns manufactured in Massachusetts. “Most of our suppliers are in New England,” Villiotte said.

The first step the women take toward developing their designs is choosing a yarn and knitting a swatch. Then the swatch is washed to determine how it will behave. Washing instructions are included with each kit.

The next step is to create the design and knit it. “We knit one another’s designs to test them,” Villiotte said. As they work, one partner may add a design element, and another may discard one. By knitting one another’s designs, they work out any stumbling blocks that may cause knitter confusion. This results in a design customers will enjoy knitting.

“Our designs are home-grown but stylish – all you have to do is knit it,” Villiotte said, showing a tank top knit in a simple lace pattern of Classic Elite City Lights yarn in black with a sparkle of nylon running through it. Turner was wearing one of her own designs, an ombre pullover in shades of deep blue and violet with a bit of knit lace at the wrists.

“Knitting is so much more than wool and mohair,” Villiotte said. Some of the company’s kits, such as a pillow and a face cloth, are knit of cotton. “We also want to feature new yarn [that knitters may not yet be familiar with]. There are so many fabulous yarns out there.”

New designs in the works include baby booties and a baby hat, another sweater and a vest that will be embellished with hand-blown glass buttons.

Although the business is still new, the women said response has been positive and they have received orders from coast to coast.

Spyra Designs soon will be featured on www.knitty.com, a Web site for knitters.

“We’re still finding our market,” Turner said. “We’re fine-tuning the business as we go along. It’s a lot of work.” But, the women said, it’s fun and they love doing it.

The three partners are confident that their new business will be successful even though the learning curve has been steep.

“Advertising on the Web is expensive, that was a surprise,” Villiotte said. “So far, we haven’t made any major errors. We know we have to try twice as hard when working with friends, but we communicate well with one another and are open to feedback. We want to grow our skills as well as our product. Also, Maine is very supportive of craft that has to do with fiber.”

One of the pluses of working with friends, the women said, was that they learn from one another and share their ideas and skills.

“Being in a business venture with friends as partners feeds our creative energy,” Turner said.

The women say that their husbands have been extremely supportive and “took it seriously,” offering help with technical aspects and taking over child care and household duties as needed.

“Our kits are for the woman who doesn’t have time to shop for yarn,” Turner said. “We have new things in the works all the time.”

“It’s hard to stem the tide of our ideas, we have so many,” Villiotte said.

To learn more about Spyra Designs visit www.spyradesigns.com or e-mail spyradesigns@adelphia.net.

To obtain information about business development seminars conducted by Maine Small Business Development Center at Eastern Maine Development Corp., call 942-1744. The next Starting your Business class will be held 2-5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11. Preregistration is preferred.