Karin Skacel-Haack

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"Natural fibers are a current trend, but I think it’s a trend that’s here to stay.  Natural fibers have always been around, and they’ve become more and more incredible.  A wool of twenty years ago is not a wool of today.  Now they know the proper processing, whether they should comb it off the underbelly, how it’s much softer that way than if they shave it off the sheep.  They understand a lot more about the different animals."

Karin Skacel phone interview June 2007

DORA:  I understand you recently took over the company from your parents.

KARIN:  That’s right, it was effective on January 1 of this year.

DORA:  So you’ve grown up in the yarn world?

KARIN:  We’ve been in business for twenty years and I’ve worked on and off with my parents during that period. They’re up in their seventies now and were getting ready to retire.  They started the business when they were in their fifties.  It was really good timing for me because I had left the industry in 2000 and had opened a pottery and glass store.  I was ready to go back to fiber.  My daughter was graduating from high school and I was able to move back to Seattle, the timing couldn’t have been better. Everything just fell into place at the right time.

DORA:  What got your folks into the business in the first place?

KARIN:  They were living in Germany for about six months.  My mother had always been a knitter.  When she was over there she thought, “Why don’t I start importing yarn?”  She had imported many things before that, everything from lederhosen to ski sweaters to copper from Holland.  She’s always been importing.

DORA:  Before you were doing the pottery shop you were working with the company, is that right?

KARIN:  Yes I worked here full time for seven years.  Prior to those seven years I created patterns for them, so basically all twenty years in some aspects I have been involved.

DORA:  You handle yarns from several different sources, knitting needles, all that.  How did the different divisions of your company come to be?

KARIN:  Throughout the years it’s changed. Schoeller yarns have been with us the whole time. Then we took on the Addi needles, which came about because my mother saw the needles in Europe and she had a dream about  them that night. She felt the need to call this gentleman (the manufacturer), and he decided to  create this needle for us in the States. That’s how that came about.  A couple of years after that she started importing the yarns from Zitron.    Zitron has been a very strong line, he just keeps getting better and better.  I believe he’s the only person left in Germany who actually manufactures from start to finish over there. They spin the yarns in Germany, they dye them there, and they actually put them on their skeins all in Germany.

DORA:  The Zitron yarns are absolutely  stunning!  So he’s been with you almost from the start?

KARIN:  About seventeen years,  He was also someone who got into this industry at a later date because of his wife.  That happens a lot in the industry.  He started out with a lot of the novelty yarns. We were very popular for the novelty yarns when we first started. Through the years he has gone away from the novelties and  into very high end wool fibers --  his merinos are just stunning.  He has created a very good alliance with the gentleman who does the spinning and also with his dyer; the three of them work incredibly well together, they’re all within an hour or two’s drive from each other.  I visited all three factories a couple of months ago and I was amazed at how well coordinated they are.

DORA:  How large is Skacel?

KARIN: About 18 full time employees, some part timers and our reps throughout the US.

DORA:  Does that make you  a middle sized company?

KARIN:  We’re not a Lion Brand.  We cater to the local yarn shops and don’t sell to the large chain stores,  so yes, we’re medium sized, not small, not huge.

DORA:  With the different lines of yarns, do you see a different customer for each?

KARIN:  I would say yes.  In general the people who are looking for natural fibers and good quality yarns are interested in the Zitron yarns and the Schulana yarns.  Those companies specialize in that . Schoeller and Austerman fall more into the trendy category, things that go with the current fashion trends.

DORA:  It seems like the fashion trends are for natural fibers.

KARIN:  Yes, natural fibers are a current trend, but I think it’s a trend that’s here to stay.  Natural fibers have always been around, and they’ve become more and more incredible.  A wool of twenty years ago is not a wool of today.  Now they know the proper processing, whether they should comb it off the underbelly, how it’s much softer that way than if they shave it off the sheep.  They understand a lot more about the different animals.   But by trendy yarns I mean the new novelty yarns that Schoeller and Austermann come out with every year.

DORA:  What does a novelty yarn mean at this point?  Not eyelash obviously!

KARIN:  To me a novelty yarn is something brought out that’s meant to last for several seasons and then go back out. Schoeller, Austermann and Schulana all bring out yarns that way.  Most of the Zitron yarns are brought in to stay. He may rotate colors a bit to stay with the current trends.

DORA:  These seasonal yarns -- we’re talking about different  looks like boucle and also different fiber content like silk or rayon?

KARIN:  All that, and also different colors.  When it comes to thing like boucle, we are seeing that again for the first time in a while. We’re starting to work with mohair again, it seemed like mohair was almost a taboo for a while.

DORA:  I love mohair!

KARIN:  A mohair today is a lot softer than it was in the past.

DORA:  When  the various companies make decisions about their yarns, are you involved in that?

KARIN:  No they make those decisions.  We have  our own line of yarn, Skacel yarns, and we are totally involved in those decisions.

DORA:  How do you make those decisions?  How do you follow the trends and figure out what people are going to be interested in?

KARIN:  Well this year we really didn’t see anything new and exciting being offered by the manufacturers we handle , so we didn’t take any new ones in under our name this fall.  In general we choose the ones we think are new and exciting and would  be a good asset to the shop, so they can sell it.  We go by touch and feel and sight, we use all our senses.  You know, you really have to, even smell.  We had some of the ones that smell nice, but they have come and gone, people got their fill of those. That was a trendy yarn.

DORA: Are you referring to the new yarns being offered by your European lines?  Or the Skacel yarns?

KARIN:  Actually, we offer all the yarns every season for the companies we distribute for.  It is our own label that we are very choosy about. A lot of research on the internet, and also going to trade shows in Europe helps us decide what to manufacture under our label.  Europe is always ahead of us.

DORA: In terms of fashion trends or specifically for knitting?

KARIN: More so in knitting than in fashion  In fashion the U.S. is catching up.  It used to be that Europe was way ahead of the us in fashion, but it’s really not far ahead any more.  When it comes to knitting, they have been ahead of us.  I will say though, with this natural fibers trend, it’s not big in Europe and it is over here.  Times are changing.  Everything we were being offered for fall was something we had seen before, and people had already knit with it.  Fiber content was not precisely what we wanted and we had some fabulous lines coming in from our other distributors already.  So we didn’t choose to put our label on any yarn this season.   Now, of course , we can tell the manufacturers exactly what we want  and design a yarn specifically for our label.

DORA:  People say there isn’t as much knitting going on in Europe.

KARIN: This the first time I’ve seen where our trend is different.  They didn’t have the big surge we had in the first years of 2000.  They had more knitters to start with, and we had our big surge.  They still have a lot of knitters, but it depends where you go.  Not that many in Germany, France, Italy, but further north a lot of knitters:  Scandinavia, England.  You’ll notice on line too, who’s sending emails and participating in the lists, it’s people from the northern regions.

DORA:  Of course I need to talk to you about crochet!  It’s my impression that Skacel has been knitting-oriented.  If there’s ever a time to cultivate the crocheter for higher end yarn, it would seem to be now.  What do you think?

KARIN:  For many years Nancy Brown was our yarn rep.  She is one of the premiere crochet designers in the US and has done incredible patterns.  Back in the nineties, she and I came out with a whole slew of patterns in crochet. Mostly Nancy. She started with these tiny crochet purses using one of our metallic novelty yarns.  We consistently sold those little purses for years.  A lot of our knitters crocheted those little purses.  These were distributed as individual patterns under our label.  We had a lot of crochet patterns actually.  Chenille was a fabulous yarn to crochet, whereas when you knit it, it always wormed.  We did a lot of patterns in  crochet and unfortunately there weren’t a lot of followers at that time. Crochet was still a little on the taboo list.  Since the big surge in knitting, people also realize crochet is a great way to accent their knitting.  Once they started doing that they also realized, hey, I could crochet a whole piece.

DORA:  Yeah, and it’s something really different.

KARIN:  It is, and it’ not just granny squares, although I love granny squares when they’re done right.  We’re trying to take our best crochet patterns from the nineties and redo them, update them a  bit.  We need to get back into the swing of crochet because for many years we didn’t do anything in crochet, so we don’t even have all the subscriptions to the various crochet magazines at this point.  I don’t know if some of these smaller magazines that used to be out there are still out there.

DORA:  I don’t know for sure. We’ve got  the new Interweave Crochet. Crochet Today which is a Coats publication.  And everything else that’s published seems to be owned by DRG.  It’s craft store oriented.

KARIN:  I don’t know if you follow the Melissa Leapman patterns, where she  does the same design in knit and crochet.

DORA:  Where does she do that?

KARIN:  In Knit ‘n Style magazine.  She’s used our yarns for a couple of them. She does a really nice job. Quite honestly, in the ones she’s done so far I like the crochet ones better.

DORA:  I missed that!  Do you do market research or is your business all word of mouth through the LYS?

KARIN:  We have a group of yarn stores we chat with.  Since I came on board, with some of the new products I’ve gone to the local knitting guilds and got information there.  The knitters had some ideas about needles and we made a prototype, then we took that new Addi needle back to the knitters to have them expand on it, and we came up with a great product that people really want.  It’s worked very well to go out into the field to people who really use it, we’ll be doing that a lot.

DORA:  There sure are some crochet products that need to be improved.

KARIN: Tell me!

DORA: I suppose they’re niche items.  The kinds of hooks that are easy to hold, with a thumb rest for people who have arthritis.

KARIN:  Have you tried our color coded handle?  Not only do they have thumb rests and the color coded plastic handles, but they’re also a little flexible.  They’re meant to do that, so it’s very comfortable when you crochet.

DORA:  I would love to try that!  What about larger size Tunisian hooks, bigger than J or K.  I know Tunisian is very popular among the afghan makers, and you get much nicer drape with a larger hook.  Well, you’d know better than I do about whether there’s a market for it, but I had to look long and hard for them and they are very expensive.   What are some of the longer term trends for yarn? Are people moving towards thinner yarns again (because of course that’s better for crochet)?

KARIN:  Yes, things are moving toward the thinner yarns.  People aren’t buying as much of the thicker yarns as they were.  But we’re still seeing a lot of people who want the size 8 - 10 needles.  At the same time, people have gotten more into the DK and sport weight yarns.

DORA:  Is it a trend, is there any way to predict whether it will keep going?

KARIN:  So many of the new knitters came into knitting with scarves made with bulky yarns.  And the ones who hung around, who really like knitting, are now starting to experiment with other yarns. A lot of them have gone to socks.  Socks are fingering weight in general.  Now they’ve discovered they can do lace - lace is really big.  So medium weight yarns are more popular at this time.  I don’t think the bulky yarns will go out altogether and I don’t think the fingering weights will go out altogether.  They come in waves.  For years we had many of the finer yarns and they haven’t sold for a couple of years.  But now we find that people are going for our nicer fine merinos, or merino silk blends and things like that.

DORA: What other fibers are really in?

KARIN:  Natural merino is very big.  Bamboo seems to be very popular, although there are several different kinds out there -- bamboo rayon, and natural bamboo from bamboo stalk.  I’m not sure people realize the difference.  They are thinking of the antibacterial properties of bamboo, and whisking away the moisture, but that’s only true for the bamboo from inside the stalk. By the time it’s turned into a rayon it has been processed heavily and no longer has those properties.  But it’s still a very strong and soft yarn, and it can be replenished easily. So it’s good for the environment.  Bamboo is popular, also soy, people are curious to try them.

DORA:  What about silk?

KARIN:  A good question.  We’ve had a few more requests for that.  Our strongest selling yarn this season was 80% silk 20% cotton and we actually had a crochet pattern made for that.  Urban Silk.  A little heavy for crochet but the pattern we had made the best of it, a short jacket, bell shaped sleeves.  Somewhat open work stitch, so it didn’t get heavy.  It worked out really nice.

DORA: I see you have lovely pattern booklets on your website.  And you also still do individual patterns?

KARIN:  Especially for our own yarns, because we don’t have anyone designing booklets for those.  The Urban Silk is a Skacel yarn, and it went very well this spring so we added more colors for fall and another pattern.  We’ll probably add even more to it because it’s going very well.

DORA:  What other new yarns will you be showing at TNNA?

KARIN: We have quite a few new sock yarns coming out with new colorways.  Sock knitting is very popular and the sock yarns are great for crochet.  We just had a crochet pattern for a child’s hat and scarf made from sock yarn.  For fall we have  a lot of natural fibers, a beautiful boucle --  it’s so light that when you throw it up in the air it takes about a minute to come down!  It’s a Schulana yarn that had a lot of acrylic to begin with and we asked them to do it with more wool and they did.  I’m in love with that one.  Alpaca, along with silk and merino, is another one of those fibers that’s been very popular.  We have a couple of alpaca blends coming out.  Most of them are not novelty in character -- basics that can be used for many seasons.

DORA: You were saying that you  are reviving some of your older patterns?

KARIN: Yes, we’re taking them out of the dusty closet and reknitting them, changing the style a bit and using modern yarns. Some of the vests that were straight down we’re making them more shapely -- people like that nowadays.  We had fabulous handbag patterns.  Everything that was crochet we are pulling them out and having then updated.

DORA: Would you ever do a whole crochet booklet?

KARIN: We probably would.  It’s on my list, but my list is a little long right now.

DORA:  Have you ever thought of selling patterns on the web?

KARIN:  Do you know Marta McCall?  We provide her with yarn and we distribute those patterns for her, and she sells them on line.

DORA: Some companies like Berroco  have so much pattern activity on their website.
I am wondering why you haven’t gone down that road.

KARIN:  It’s a growing trend, and we are considering it.  We just revamped the whole website.  Now our next step would be to put the patterns on.  We are looking into it, but haven’t made a 100% decision on that.  Some stores don’t like it  and our growth was due to the local yarn shops and want to support them.  But we are researching it.

DORA:  I understand that point of view.  On the other hand, don’t you think all the activity around needlework on the internet, generates a lot of interest too?

KARIN:  I think a lot of people browse the internet for yarn but then go to their LYS to touch and feel it.  I shop on the internet but I don’t necessarily buy.

DORA:  Who are some of the designers you work with?

KARIN:  We work with quite a few.  A lot of designers use our yarns in their books -- Cat Bordhi, Nicki Epstein, Melissa Leapman, Helen Haman has just done a series of patterns for us.  I’ve got a list of 30 designers.  We use them for a lot of things, and they use our yarns in their books.

DORA:  Well they are beautiful yarns, I enjoyed every one you sent me, I was very excited. They worked really well in crochet.

KARIN:  Whatever we can do revive crochet with these great yarns, let me know.

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