We were lucky to catch up with Johanna Miller recently and have shared our conversation below.
Johanna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?
From the very start, my goal has always been to create a business that brings me joy, fulfills me, and supports me, giving me the freedom to follow my passions. With that in mind, my mission for Potion Yarns is to inspire my customers to create magic with their hands, and share that magic with the world. I want people who see or use my yarns to feel joy, appreciate beauty in the world, and connect with the creativity inside of them, finding their own unique way to bring that out into the world. As a yarn company, I am also a very tangible link to an ancient heritage of artistry meeting functionality: knitting, crochet, spinning, and weaving are fundamental to our human history and when we indulge in these arts, we connect to generations of men and women who have gone before us and left little pieces of their hearts and hands with us. While the knitted or crocheted pieces themselves may not always last, the fulfillment and joy of creation is perhaps the most spiritual and divine act we can engage in on earth. I create beautiful, unique hand dyed yarns so that when you use my fibers, you honor the time and effort you put into each project. My yarns make each stitch a delight, and the joy, beauty, and comfort that brings to not only my customers but anyone who uses the handmade pieces they create is what I’m striving for. So what do I hope my legacy is? Passing on the joy of creation to everyone I come into contact with. If I can leave the world a more beautiful place, that is a noble thing; but if I can inspire YOU to create beauty in your part of the world, then together we’ve changed the world and found joy in the process.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I hand dye high quality yarns and fibers that will inspire you to create magic with your hands through the ancient fiber arts like knitting, crochet, spinning, and weaving. My goal with my hand-dyed yarns is to create rich, dimensional colors that shift and glisten from every angle. I love combining unusual colors, and creating vibrant multi-hued skeins with luster. As a former hairstylist, I’ve always been obsessed with color and I understand the very emotional impact color has on our lives. I have become known for my bold use of color; deep, intensely saturated shades; meticulous attention to detail; and personalized, top notch customer service. I started my hand dyeing business after years of working behind the chair as a hair colorist. When searching for very specific colors for a knitting project and finding nothing that was like what I envisioned, I decided to use my skill as a colorist to learn to dye yarns and very quickly fell in love with the process! After almost 15 years in that industry, I left the salon to create Potion Yarns (so named because I felt like a wizard mixing magical potions in my dye cauldrons!). I focus on protein fibers (wools and wool blends), on high quality, luxury yarns. As the only dyer in my business, all of my yarns are completely unique to my brand and cannot be obtained anywhere else. Part of what makes hand dyed yarn so magical is that each dyer has their own style, flair, and perspective, making each company an artisan product that no machine or other dyer can ever reproduce exactly. Each skein is like buying an original painting, but at a fraction of the cost!
As a fiber artist myself, I understand what my customers want and need for their luxury yarns and I provide the very best quality products and education. Each skein that leaves my studio is of the highest quality, is neat and tidy, and beautifully dyed. I’m proud of creating a name for my business that equals quality, luxury, rich color, and excellent service.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
As an online business, I don’t get the opportunity to interact face to face with customers very often; so building trust and establishing a personal connection is paramount. I’m also a tiny one person business, so my strategy for connecting with customers is to really highlight and build on being a real face behind the brand. I use social media posting and my newsletter to share personal stories, my personal knitting projects, and mentions of my family to remind people that I’m just like them: a real person, with a mortgage, kids, and tangled yarn. I do want to protect my kids’ choices and not share too much personal info about them online; but I do share little personal updates on our family through my newsletter which helps my customers understand why sometimes items sell out quickly and can’t be restocked right away, or why my shop is closed for more than a day or two at Christmas. I get feedback all the time from customers saying how much they love hearing how my kids are doing and what they are up to, and funny stories about life in our small town. Those touches of the personal help my customers feel like they are supporting their neighbor or buying from a friend, not just a nameless, faceless business. They know their money is going to buy diapers, fix our dishwasher, and support our small local community. Another thing I focus on to build brand loyalty is highlighting my own passion and how that creates superior products. People really respond to joy and passion and my customers love knowing that I’m head over heels for what I do. I also share lots of tips and tricks that help them improve their craft. My brand is a luxury product for the yarn industry, so my customers are not just picking up the needles once every decade to make a potholder; they tend to be people who regularly spend lots of time crafting and want high quality materials and to increase their skills. So I focus a lot on suggestions for patterns and projects, tips for solving common craft related problems, how to care for their yarn and handmade items, and funny stories they can relate to because it happens to every fiber artist. My goal is for my social media to not only be beautiful, but to feel like you are sitting down to knit and chat with a friend.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
I dye all of my yarns and fiber by hand in small batches which ensures their uniqueness and high quality. Hand dyed yarn is an art, but it’s a very niche industry without any traditional path to education (there are no school programs for dyeing yarn!). Most, if not all, dyers are self taught from books, the internet, and trial and error. When I first tried dyeing yarn, my only experience with dye was as a hairstylist: I had worked for 15 years in the salon. While much of my knowledge of color theory and eye for detail translated well, dyeing yarn (made of wool), is a totally different process than dyeing human hair! Even after teaching myself and starting a business, over the years, I have continued to grow my skills through constant education, and lots of learning on the job…so lots of mistakes! The internet has made self education such an easy task with so many resources out there! One of my favorite ways to learn and grow is to watch other dyers YouTube videos, Instagram reels, and TikToks: it’s quite a trend to show videos of dyers creating their colors. While this doesn’t give away any of their recipes or secrets, just watching their techniques gives me ideas for creating my own techniques and ways of dyeing that I can then develop my own recipes for. I never copy other dyers’ work, but I do find it inspiring to watch others doing their craft and then think how I can develop my own spin on things! I also love that each dyer has a unique style and I love to see how we all do things our own way and create uniquely magical products!
After 5 years in business, my family moved to a new city with a completely different water source. That changed my dye results dramatically and I had to quickly teach myself some more chemistry to learn how to treat my water and alter dye recipes to get better results. A key component to my business is to create repeatable colors, and colors that don’t fade or bleed in the water. So learning the chemistry behind my dyes and water and how those affect different fibers was essential and now I have the confidence that no matter where my business might move or how my water source might change, I know how to adjust and keep the quality of my products consistent.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://potionyarns.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/potionyarns/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PotionYarns/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0hBEtd_AKzMke5dWtctKmQ
Image Credits
Johanna Miller