Part 3 - Spinning Yarn...

The rug yarn business proved to be somewhat profitable and interesting. Every year the "mini mill" group would hold a conference. Owners of mini mills would all get together and discuss new products and what works and what doesn't.  Amy and I had a chance to go to our first conference. It was held in Ohio at another mini mill. This was a very busy mill and they have3 times as many machines as Amy and I did. We found the other mill owners to be good people and very welcoming. Although we were all competition for each other, there is so much work out there that it was not much of an issue.  Amy and I had a very simple business plan just producing rug yarn.  We could also do roving and batting but 99% of our work was rug yarn. While at the conference, the owner of the hosting mill took us aside and offered us an account.  It was a small boutique in New York City that sold yarn and was looking for around 30 bumps of rug yarn a month. Being new to the business, we were thankful for the account.  The owner of the hosting mill explained that the two ladies that run the boutique are looking for a very specific and high quality rug yarn that he himself can produce, but he had so much other work, he really did not have the time to devote to this small account that is needed.

Amy and I drove back from the conference excited to have a real account for our mill. After a lot of back and forth and samples, we finally agreed on a particular rug yarn that we could produce. The usual order of 30 bumps grew quickly as the demand for this new "chunky yarn" grew in NYC. The 30 bumps became 100 bumps then 300 bumps and one month, an order of 500 bumps was requested. At first, we were producing Alpaca rug yarn, but a demand for Merino, which is a high quality sheep wool, became our focus. Our one carding machine could process about 5 pounds of rug yarn in an hour. We had to constantly monitor the output to ensure it met the quality standards agreed upon with the boutique. When the mill was running it made us approximately $75 to $80 per hour. Amy and I would constantly be running the machine in order to keep up with the big orders from the boutique. We also had to squeeze in the orders from alpaca farms that were coming in from all over the country. We ended up hiring a couple of friends to help us out. At one point, we had 3 employees and had 2 shifts a few days a week.

I grew concerned that we were focusing too much on the boutique and not so much on the individual farms. Although the boutique would cut us a nice check each week for the previous week's delivery, they were very consistent and reliable. Realistically, at that point we should have expanded. Purchased a second carding machine and moved the operation to a bigger building and possibly hire more employees.  This would have allowed us to continue servicing the small farms along with the high demands of the New York boutique. Instead, the boutique approached us and wanted us to produce exclusively for them. They had started wholesaling the yarn to other yarn stores in several other states and a couple countries. This was guaranteed work for our mill and because the demand was growing, we thought it might be a good move for us. I still was concerned that we were putting all our eggs in one basket, we had to trust the boutique would keep working with us. We did find out accidentally that the boutique had the original mill (the host mill for the conference) doing some side work for them. We were a little concerned, but were thankful for the work that we really did not make an issue of it.

We would get a 600lbs bale of Merino delivered to our mill from the boutique. It would take us just over a month to use up the entire bale.  After months of making yarn for the boutique, we noticed that the orders for yarn started to slow down. The boutique assured us that there was no problem. They told us that we had produced so much yarn that they were starting to build up an inventory and needed to lessen the numbers of bumps they ordered. The writing was on the wall.

One day, one of the owners of the boutique showed up at our mill with a truck and took what was left of one of the big bales of merino.  They told us that they had purchased their own mini mill and were going to produce the white yarn bumps, but would still keep us for the colored bumps. This was a big blow to our business. We immediately did email blasts to announce that we had room to process for alpaca farms. We started to look into the untapped Llama market. We started to run into issues with employees, Amy was recovering from multiple surgeries related to breast cancer and our carding mill was beat. I had to replace both motors and other major parts to keep it going. I had to be the maintenance guy since the mini mill company that normally serviced our machine was always on the other side of the country. I could only do so much. With the lack of work and mechanical problems, our money machine was not producing much. It appeared that we had seen the peak in the alpaca rug yarn market and less and less work was coming our way. The boutique purchased a second machine and we were no longer producing yarn for them.

As with any business, mistakes were made and in hindsight we would have done things differently in order to keep the mill solvent. Although we sold our equipment back to the manufacturer, we would still consider opening another small mill.  There is still a demand out there. We also might consider different machines. We would definitely do it in a climate controlled building and not be as tempted by "big" accounts that would tie up our machines.

Well, we did take a break from the farm (as far as it being a source of income) and purchased a restaurant in Nashville Tennessee in February 2014. After a year running the restaurant, we moved back to CT and got back into farming....next we diversify again, this time with a different farm animal...