How do hand dyed yarn updates work?

Today I thought I’d try and answer some questions about how our updates work. If you’re new to Eden Cottage Yarns you may well be wondering what it’s all about.

Basically we produce hand dyed yarn as well as our mill-dyed yarn ranges, and the hand dyed yarn comes in limited quantities. I hand dye it in my kitchen sink, and usually do batches of 10x100g skeins per colour. I dye every day, but what I can produce is still obviously limited. On top of that it’s fairly time-consuming to photograph it all and then get the photos uploaded to the website. So what we do is we’ll plan to do say 20kg of each of two yarn types over a two week period. Rather than have to keep setting up to photograph a few dye lots as and when they are dry, we basically batch-process because it is more efficient. This means that I’ll be doing the dyeing, then as the yarn dries Claire will twist and label it, and then once all it is done I will take a couple of hours out of a morning and go and photograph all of it. Then Laura will add it all to the website and set a time and date for it to appear to the public. That gives me time to upload the photos to each yarn listing and double-check things like stock quantities, and then let everybody know when it’ll be available.

The other advantage is that by setting a date and time for it to all go online, it means that every single customer has an equal chance of getting what they (you!) want, which I feel is a nice and fair way to do it. You do generally need to be quick, so what I also like to do is put a preview of each update up on both Facebook and Flickr - Facebook has the advantage that by making it an event, if you mark yourself as ‘interested’ or ‘going’ it will automatically send you reminders about it, and also as I add photos and info you’ll see that those too. I use Flickr as an alternative for those of you who are not on Facebook so that you can still see all the yarn photos. I think if you can get a good idea as to what you’ll want to buy then you stand a better chance of being ready when the time comes, rather than panicking because you want to look at the colours but are worried about other people buying them first. We do also send direct email reminders on the dot of when each update goes live, so if you’re not on the newsletter list for that then you can sign up HERE.

Have you ever heard of ‘cart-jacking’? It’s where you have items in your online shopping cart then someone else swoops in and buys them in the time it’s taking you to browse or checkout. In theory that shouldn’t be able to happen on our website, as Shopify (our webhost) has a five minute shopping cart hold - from the point where you start to checkout you should have five minutes to complete it, during which time other people cannot buy items that are in your shopping cart. I must admit though, I don’t know how reliable it is. I haven’t had any complaints about cart-jacking since we’ve been with Shopify but that doesn’t  necessarily mean it’s not possible. So please just be aware that when an update goes live, if there’s something you really want you may need to be quick about it.

A note about combining orders - this is something we cannot guarantee to do. Why? Because we print and pack orders in the order in which they come through, so even if you place two orders just five minutes apart, they can be pages apart on our system as there coulee be another 20 orders (for example) in between them. So by the time we get to your second order, the first one will be already packed up - maybe even already gone to the Post Office. If we spot two orders from the same person next to each other we will usually try and combine them unless you ask us not to - we just really cannot promise that. If you’re wondering why you might not want orders combining - well non-EU ones have to have a customs declaration label on with the order value written on, so if we combine your order and the value is high it may be more likely to attract customs hold-ups or charges (possibly, I don’t know for sure, but people often ask us to NOT combine orders for that reason).

We often get asked “where do I see the update?” - well when it goes live it will appear on our website. Usually we have the home page set to show ‘recently added’, and then there’s a ‘view all’ link on the top right hand side which you can tap on and see all the recently added yarns (and/or other things). They will show as ‘out of stock’ as they become so, and for the quantity that’s left you need to tap on the yarn heading to take you into the individual listing page, and then it’ll tell you more about the colour, show you more pictures if there are any, and tell you how many are left.

We show our prices both excluding and including VAT - we are a VAT registered company, so we have to charge VAT on all products that are applicable to customers within the EU. Non-EU customers can go on the excluding VAT price, whilst UK and EU customers need to go on the including VAT price. Don’t forget that the website doesn’t know where you are until you put your address in! So it can’t charge or exempt you from VAT until you tell it where you are. Tax is applicable to shipping too, so when you check out you will see the line items and shipping before tax, then a line for the tax, then a total.

Once you’ve placed your order you will get an order confirmation email, and then when your order ships we will send an order shipped email - if you haven’t had one it might be worth checking your spam or junk mail folders. That’s all there is to it!

This might also help explain why we have mill-dyed yarns as well as hand dyed, as with the mill-dyed I can have my own colours and yarn base, but in larger quantities, which is really useful. More on that another time.

Does this article answer your questions? If you have any, please feel free to pop them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

- Victoria