133: Darn Good Yarn: How to Knit a Side Business into a Big Business (with Nicole Snow)

Background on Nicole Snow of Darn Good Yarn:

Nicole Snow is the Founder and CEO at Darn Good Yarn. Born in northern NJ, Nicole grew up in a log cabin & spent hours playing “craft corner” with an old fashioned cash register & her parents’ office supplies. Nicole later attended Clarkson University, starting a successful business during her freshman year and earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Business and Technology Management with Honors in 2004. After serving in the United States Air Force for two years, Nicole embarked upon a career at a paper company but soon got fired, with the president noting that she “wasn’t suited for small business.”

Undeterred, Nicole launched Around the Om, a general imports company, in 2006. Two years later, wanting to create a business focused on social consciousness through crafting and design, Nicole merged the firm into a new entity, Darn Good Yarn. Since then, Darn Good Yarn has saved over 1,000,000 pounds of manufacturing remnant material from ending up in landfills or rivers, upcycling it into hand-spun, hand-dyed silk yarn and craft supplies and employing more than 600 Indian and Nepalese artisans.

Darn Good Yarn serves the $44B craft market by providing beautiful, lustrous handmade yarns and fabrics to knitters, crocheters and quilters. The materials are upcycled from remnants from the production of silk saris and made by female artisans in India and Nepal who benefit from steady work. Founded in 2006 by Air Force veteran Nicole Snow, the firm serves crafters all over the world and provides employment for more than 600 women overseas and an additional nine people in the United States.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[3:45] Currently, Darn Good Yarn has 26 employees and their gross sales at the end of 2018 were around $7 million. Nicole gave a little more background about her company.
[5:21] Nicole started the company during the height of the recession.
[6:51] She works with wholesalers in India. Most of her yarn comes from Asia, predominantly in India.
[9:14] Nicole talks about how she actually started being an entrepreneur. She met someone who became her mentor and helped her start her own business.
[13:28] During the early days of her business, Nicole didn’t have much knowledge about yarns. She made some mistakes that turned out positive for her.
[16:27] Initially, selling yarns was just a side hustle for Nicole. She was ordering skeins and pre-balling them in her kitchen until she has these balls of yarn ready to be sold.
[18:57] Talking to her suppliers and sharing her story and her willingness to grow her business really helped Nicole during the early days.
[21:41] She facilitates a strategy that can lower her import cost from India.
[27:26] Nicole explains how she learned about shipping and inventory from her previous online business.
[30:07] Helping people in India was a big motivator for Nicole to grow her business during the earlier days.
[37:07] There were several key factors that contributed to the large revenue growth of the company. She mentions Facebook ads, collecting emails, and apps.
[42:49] Tracking customer behaviors is very important in order to connect to the customers.
[49:00] Nicole emphasizes on the importance of time management.
[51:26] Nicole talks about the hardest part of building her Darn Good Yarn through the years.
[58:26] According to Nicole, using the seagull management technique should be avoided.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? My grow lights… and no not for weed :), for lettuce I grow in my basement with my daughter.
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Audible on 2x while driving. The info sinks in deeper and it's easier to act on awesome ideas (Our link for Audible: millionaire-interviews.com/audible).
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Finding a mentor that can help me strategize and scale the company outside of just selling “real” products.

Key Point from the Interview:

“I had to rely on my team and ask for help a lot more, and in doing that, I allowed them to blossom and do their jobs even more effectively.”

Resources Mentioned:

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