New York State Sheep & Wool Festival
I am attending the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (also known as Rhinebeck Festival) on October 16-17. If you are attending check us out in building 31 at booth 26. In addition to selling my products I’m hoping to bring some prototypes for a few new products. You can get more information about this festival at their website.
I am also planning to go to the Fiber Festival of New England in Springfield, MA on November 6-7. I am still looking for a helper for this festival. This person would demo and help anyone interested spin (levels range from young kids to expert spinners). I pay $20 per hour. While I’m not sure what this festival requires, I will ask anyone working at my booth to be vaccinated and to wear a mask due to the large number of people we’ll see each day. If you are interested in this, reply to this email with any experience you have and I’ll schedule a quick phone call to chat.
New Building
This has been a long time in the works, and now is finally the time to share this exciting news with the community.
Let rewind back when I started making eSpinners in 2009. Back then I was just assembling a few of them at a time in my basement. As my my business grew I hired some locals to help with assembly while I continued shipping them out of my basement. At this point I had converted nearly my whole basement space for my business. This was great because it kept my costs very low. In early 2019 I had to rent a warehouse space in Shirley, MA thanks to the massive success of the EEW Nano. It has been a great space for me and I negotiated good terms for the three year lease. About ten months ago I found out my lease would be going up by 60% and I started looking for other options.
After a lot of research I decided to build a workshop and office at my house. This will be a much better space for new product development than I’ve ever had, and it will let me keep work separate from our house which is important to my work-life balance. I also love that my daily commute will be a 30 second walk from my house. Construction has started on this building and there is a picture of the foundation below. It will be at least a few months before I can move in, and I’ll keep you updated on the progress of this new Dreaming Robots HQ.
Another change that comes with this, is shipping from my home with the current volumes just isn’t practical even with this new workshop. So I’ve also found a fulfillment center 10 minutes from my house in Leominster, MA that has given me great terms. The cost of this fulfillment space is less than one-third of what I’d pay if I stayed in my current dedicated warehouse space. The way this new space works is they will give me a little space to setup a fulfillment station in a way that is efficient to ship my products. Then they will store most of my pallets in their large warehouse area. I will have access to the warehouse anytime I want, which is one reason I went with this fulfillment location. I wanted to keep the shipping as flexible as possible going forward and this helped accomplish that. I plan to continue shipping all the daily orders like I do today for a few weeks until I have a very efficient system setup. Once I’m happy with the setup I will hand off daily shipping to an employee at this warehouse.
These two changes will let me focus more on improving existing products and developing new products. I actually like the time I spend each day shipping out orders because it’s easy and relaxing, but I do admit it isn’t the best use of my time. I think these changes will help me keep my prices affordable and will let me do more creative new products for the EEW line at Dreaming Robots.
EEW Yarn Counter Case
I am giving away some free 3D printable files for a custom case to hold the EEW Yarn Counter. I know the this Yarn Counter hasn’t shipped yet, but maybe this will help pass the time. This page gives you some options to get 3D printed parts if you don’t have access to a 3D printer. Manufacturing of the Yarn Counter is looking good and I should be providing more updates on that once I get final samples from the factory.
Happy spinning!
– Maurice Ribble
(Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel)
www.dreamingrobots.com
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I am SO thrilled with my EEW6! I took it to a Sip&Stitch in Longmont, Colorado and it was a huge hit! I even think one of the ladies ordered one!
I am from Canada and had my 6 delivered to my son in Denver and I use it most every day! It is perfection! I do have another wheel, a SpinOlution Pollywog whichI love too, but the 6 is so great for travelling!! I took it with me last month to Boston as a carry-on in a small drinks type cooler and it was safe and sound! I got a lot of attention in the airport waiting area as I spun there and people were coming over and asking me all about it! I LOVE how quiet it is!
Anyway, enough of my chatter but Thank You for all your do and BEST of LUCK in your new work space!
Warm regards,
Debbe