I’ve been mulling over the issue of my older patterns for a while now. Acutely conscious that the downside of using social media to market one’s work means that invariably you actually have to talk about it from time to time (ie mention it in posts, on Instagram, casually drop it into twitter conversations) in order to actually sell anything.
It’s quite un-British and ‘selling posts’ are the thing I struggle with most online.
As a natural consequence of this I find that I am much more comfortable talking about my newer work as subconsciously or not, I feel that this is of more value to the reader. In reality of course, very few of those who follow me on social media have been following me since the beginning of my designing career. To those stalwart and much appreciated souls who have, however, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
In actual fact, many of those who follow me now probably don’t have a clue about my older body of work - back in the Ravelry days.
It’s for these newer customers that occasionally I overcome my reluctance and schedule a few posts about some of my older patterns - usually those with a seasonal link or something to tie in to current events.
It was after one such post that I received an email which, I have to confess took me back a little. In essence it was someone asking, none too politely, why I felt able to charge for older designs. To paraphrase it was basically “you’ve already done the work and the file is just sitting there, so why do you still charge for it”
Clearly the concept of attempting to make a profit via a semi-passive income is a bit lost on this correspondent - and I’d love to see them argue for a free copy of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ in a bookstore - but it did make me stop and think for a bit.
When I shared this on twitter there were a few well-meaning comments about maybe packaging up older designs into a bundle and selling them at a significant discount in order to generate sales. But the more I thought about it the more I thought that to be honest that was even worse than the ‘just make them free’ argument.
Using this approach starts from the premise that there is something inherently less worthy about older patterns compared to newer ones. But this isn’t fast fashion. People are far less likely to only knit patterns from ‘this season’, unlike with clothing where it’s quite common for retailers to mark down ‘end of season’ ranges.
In a similar vein, who is to say when a pattern is deemed old? They aren’t published with expiry dates. If someone today stumbles across my website and goes browsing around for patterns - please do feel free by the way - to them, all of the patterns they see there are new. They don’t differentiate, I don’t think, between those added this year compared to those that have been published some years previously. They are all equally novel.
Not only does a pattern bundle devalue the actual patterns themselves but I believe it also devalues the worth of my customers. Those loyal souls who actually choose to get my newsletter, who like and comment on my Instagram posts, who share a tweet or take a photo of their latest Fuss Free festival shawl to share with others.
I hate the phrase ‘target customer’ but these people really are the reason why I have a business at all. They are happy to pay full price for a pattern, but also appreciate a new pattern discount or early bird price on occasion via my newsletter.
Chasing after customers who don’t see that they should have to pay for older patterns, or who can only be enticed to buy them at a considerable reduction is not where I want to spend my valuable time.
On a slightly different tangent I’d be interested in how many patterns from bundles actually make it onto needles. From my own personal experience I know that I have bought bundles in the past that have just been filed and forgotten. I might have knit 1 or 2 of them but the remainder have certainly never seen the light of day.
How about you - do you like or value bundles? I’d love your feedback on this.
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