We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chantal Miyagishima a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Chantal, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

When I originally started Knitatude over 9 years ago, it really came from wanting to sell my overflow of knitting. It eventually graduated to selling physical items (such as scarves and hats etc) at markets and it blossomed from there.

Back in 2017 (after 3 years of selling knits) I realize that I had bottle-necked myself. With not being able to take on additional orders simply because I couldn’t keep up, I was finding myself burnt out and not being able to make more money or scale my business. Not to mention the boredom of making the same type of items over and over again made me realize that I had not only stunted my creativity but my business itself.

In the fall of 2017, I started designing knitwear. It started as a “selfish project” to knit something for me but became a gateway to selling digital files. In the knitting world, it’s common to sell the steps or “recipes” to make an item. Selling digital items made it possible to fall back in love with designing and my craft, but it also made it possible to scale my business as I didn’t have to worry about fulfilling orders. I would do the work upfront and then reap the rewards.

I’ve now gone on to collaborate with and be contracted by some of the biggest yarn companies in the world to create patterns out of their yarn. It’s really only gone uphill from there!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello! My name is Chantal and I am the purple-haired, potty-mouth knitter and owner behind Knitatude. I design size-inclusive (XS-5X) knitwear that are made with the beginner knitter in mind. With a focus on knit garments (such as sweaters, dresses and shirts), all of my patterns are easy to read and feel like confidence boosts. Each of my designs really takes after a classic and timeless look, and is meant to shock your friends when they say “That’s not store-bought? You MADE that?”

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

“The customer is always right” is a total bunch of horse shit. As a small business owner, you have to come to the reality that people will sadly try to take advantage of you. You need to stick to your guns and be strong enough to stand up for yourself. Otherwise running a business is going to be a hell of a lot harder as you’re trying to people please. Remember: Some people don’t deserve to be your customers. Fire them.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Ooh yes! As of now I have over 100K on IG, 40ish K on TikTok, and the best advice I have is:

1. Be yourself.
2. Show your face on social media.
3. Use hashtags + trending sounds
4. Be your own bot. Take 15 minutes a day to go engage on OTHER people’s content.
5. Share the content YOU want. Not what you think people expect of you. Gradually your audience will grow because of your passion for the thing you love talking about the most!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.knitatude.ca
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/knitatude
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/knitatude
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@knitatude www.etsy.com/shop/knitatude