I'm excited to be celebrating Local Yarn Store Day with Lisa and her team at the Old Orcutt Yarnery in Orcutt next weekend!  They're going to have some fun stuff going on including new project bags and mugs, special kits, a Lykke prize drawing, and some special stitch markers and other goodies that are free with purchases.  I'll bring a variety of swifts, our color samples if you want to see all of your choices in person and place an order there, and fun notions like our Card Gauges, Knitting Rulers, StitchFishes and more.  Plus I'll have a new color of StitchFishes with me - check out Pixie!  It's shiny and rainbow-y and delightful.

Not anywhere near the Central Coast of California? 

You can always shop our store online!

Hooooo friends, it has been a month.  It is hard enough to make a living manufacturing specialty products, and when I don't know if the parts that go into my products are going to suddenly jump 2x or more in cost, well, it's pretty stressful.  For Glider Swifts and SkeinTwisters, I've designed both of them, every part is custom, and we assemble and test them all right here in our shop in San Luis Obispo.  We are part of the definition of a small US manufacturer.

 

I don't make every single part from scratch - that would be like making cookies out of flour that you ground yourself and grew the wheat for.  It doesn't make sense for me to do that when plenty of other specialized manufacturers exist that will make both generic parts like screws and my custom designed parts like circuit boards and swift hubs.  I spend an enormous amount of time optimizing parts cost so that I can sell my tools at prices that people can afford (and yes, they're still specialty and expensive, I know!).  I'd say about 80% of the work that goes into developing a new product is sourcing parts - where am I going to get those motors, where am I going to get my custom circuit boards made, where am I going to get the plastic parts made, where am I going to get those aluminum enclosures.  Whenever it makes sense to use a supplier in the US, I do!  It saves on shipping and communication is much faster and easier.  However, it is a global economy and the manufacturing of goods is spread across that globe.  So I get a lot of parts from Asia, and specifically China, because that's the only place they're being made.  And it's not just the electronics, this is true for almost all of those glorious glittery colors I offer for swifts.

There's about as much electronics manufacturing in the US as there is textile manufacturing - almost none.  There are no USA suppliers for the components that go onto my custom circuit boards - all component manufacturing is in Asia and concentrated particularly in China.  No matter your feelings on China (whispers: which I'd also encourage examination of because everything comes to us through a lens of western propaganda), we all have to acknowledge that China has spent 40-50 years specifically investing in and building up their domestic electronics (and textile) production and workforce, while the US government has been pretty fine with letting those industries stagnate and dwindle to almost zero here.  Anyone with experience in manufacturing understands that it's simply not possible to snap your fingers and spring a fully mature electronics component manufacturing plant into existence, so the whole thing about these tariffs being good for US manufacturers is patently false.  I'm a US manufacturer and I depend on low-fee global trade to make just about everything we sell.  Tariffs are really bad because I have no option other than to pay them, and increase the price of my products.

 

It's also worth mentioning that as a small business, I rely heavily on the “de minimus” $800 exemption which is set to end (again) on May 2.  De minimus has been erroneously referred to as a loophole, and while there is certainly opportunity for large marketplaces and companies to exploit it, it's there so that it doesn't cost the government $20 to collect $10 worth of fees.  It's there so that you don't have to pay import fees on that super awesome yarn you bought from Shetland, or that hand dyer in Canada.  If Amazon and Temu are problems, then go after them, don't get rid of a protection that both consumers and small businesses rely on.

So what does this all have to do with the Glow Hats?  Well, with so much uncertainty about what LEDs, circuit boards, and batteries are going to cost, there's not a lot I can do until that settles out.  I'm still working on it, and I've been making some great little prototype boards that explore connector options, what size and shape works well, and I'm also testing some new and interesting charging chips that could make the battery a little more svelte.  Custom LED controller work will be starting soon and I'm pretty excited about that.  Really, regardless of the tariff situation, I'm still gonna go on making things, just try to stop me.

It's been on hold a little because of (gestures broadly) but I'm still working on it.  What kind of dicussions or resources would you love to see in an online community focused on electronics & yarn tools?  What questions do you have?  Seriously, reply to this email and tell me!  A couple of people friended me after the last newsletter and I messaged back, but haven't heard anything.  So if you friended me, check your Discord messages!  If you missed the last newsletter, friend me @alpenglowind on Discord if you want to check out the draft version of the Discord.  :)

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