CAMPAIGN For Wool partner Australian Country Spinners will participate in the World Wide Knit In Public Day this year as part of a reinvention of the company through focused marketing.
Just 14 months in the job, new chief executive officer Rob Milne is moving the company away from price and product-driven paradigms by building new marketing messages around the company’s brands to appeal to a younger audience.
“When something is product led it very quickly becomes a commodity and what do you buy on, you actually buy on is price,” Mr Milne said.
Worldwide Knit in Public Day was started in 2005 by Danielle Landes and takes place around the second Saturday of June annually – June 11 this year. It is the largest knitter run event in the world.
Mr Milne said ACS had convinced Australia’s largest chain store craft, fabric and interior supplier Spotlight to have a knitting party around June 11. The four-day party would include yarn offers and in-store demonstrations.
“Lincraft are having a charity knit so you will be given yarn for free so you can knit for charity.”
AC S had also invited 450 yarn stores to run knitting parties and Australian Woman’s Weekly will host a party in Melbourne.
In New Zealand 250 stores would be assisted by ACS to be involved with Worldwide Knit in Public Day.
“We are going to have the biggest yarn party in the world, but we are not trying to break records, we are trying to sell yarn,” Mr Milne said.
“It’s an opportunity to showcase that it is not just grannies that knit.”
Mr Milne said the company does supply yarn to other private labels, but he said it was very difficult to buy yarn without pattern support and the company holds about 50 per cent of the pattern-supply market in the southern hemisphere.
“But it is only a matter of time before someone comes out with a better pattern and they take away our market share from us – unless we get involved in marketing.”
None of the major craft stores and yarn destinations such as Lincraft and Spotlight do yarn marketing, so Mr Milne convinced his board to do something about it.
“I said to everyone our business philosophy has changed.
“We used to be very good at putting yarn on your shelves we are going to get even better at getting it off your shelves.”
The process involved applying modern and sometimes sexy, provocative marketing to its brands such as Patons, Panda, Cleckheaton, Rowan and Shepherd.
Patons got a makeover as a “not cheap” brand to extend the company into different price levels; Panda, the company’s acrylic yarn destination would be “cheap, cheerful and bright” and Cleckheaton would be all about the wool as “The Natural Choice”.
Marketing initiatives with photography targeting young consumers have started with Spotlight, and with magazines Better Homes and Gardens and Australian Woman’s Weekly that have grown into knitting supplements with ACS patterns.
“It’s got bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Mr Milne said Australian Wool Innovation has funded ACS with $70,000 to market wool yarns here through an Australian Woman’s Weekly campaign called “Look and Feel Fabulous in Wool” to start in April this year.
For the first time ACS has produced a 30-page book of knitting patterns built around its mid-tier brand Cleckheaton brand that has been very well-received by the trade, Mr Milne said. It was distributed with ACS yarn during this year Loreal Fashion Week in Melbourne.
ACS is also a foundation partner of Save The Children and this year will participate in the Born to Knit project where small squares are knitted to raise money for disadvantaged children. Mr Milne believed ACS would sell thousands of co-branded knitting kits as part of its partnership with Save The Children.
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