No matter if you’re a knit/crochet designer with an XXL following or someone who’s been in the game for a short time, working with brands is, at this point, an almost essential part of being in the crafting community. However, it can be a bit daunting and, at times, feel like a jungle. Like, where do you even start? How do I know if brands will even like my work? Is asking brands if they are looking for collabs OK? Won’t I come across as a bit of a cretin if I ask for free yarn?! The truth is that being sponsored by brands is absolutely huge and a growing number of companies are realising just how valuable us crafters are in terms of publicity for their beautiful products. So, what kind of stuff can you do? As well as designing for magazines, you can work with e-commerce platforms, involve affiliate marketing as a way of earning a passive income, amongst a mountain of other cool things, and this article will hopefully help you navigate the sometimes stormy seas of collaborations!
So, what kinds of brand collaborations are there?
Publications doing ‘call outs’ for designers: If I may start by spitting some facts, it’s pretty common to see magazines working with the same people month by month, and it is often pretty hard to get your foot in the door unless you are matey with publishers, editors, and hobnob with bigger names. I take it from experience. Pay for this kind of work is also – sometimes – on the lower end of the scale, and some publications are often wary of working with designers outside of the country they are based in (take British magazines not really working with makers outside the UK since Brexit, etc.). Totally understandable given rising customs costs, etc.
That said, nothing beats seeing your face and your wonderful work in a magazine, and this was what really made my own brand take off, majorly. Magazines do call-outs on social media, as well as on their own websites and blogs. If you’re interested in doing this kind of work, make sure to follow craft magazines on social media and keep an eye out. Magazines also have industry-standard tech editors and testers working with them to refine your designs further, so expect to liase with these people and answer questions, clarify your instructions, etc. This can be tedious but is necessary to ensure your pattern is high quality and up to the stands that publications require. Don’t worry if a tech ed gets a bit stuffy with you over your pattern – phrases like ‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! 💀’ have been seen occasionally – they mean no harm! They’re just doing their job, so don’t sweat it if they pick your work apart a bit like a yarny KFC chicken wing.
Sponsored content for yarn brands: This is when a yarn company sends you yarn to rave about on your social media, maybe review it, or make a small project with. In this case, the remuneration is the yarn you have received. Free yarn? Yes, please! You can do whatever you want with this yarn afterwards. There’s no commitment other than the social media posts used as the exchange for free items. Quick, simple, and yes… FREE YARN!
Regular, paid collaborations with brands: Probably the holy grail, this type of lump-sum work with brands is not only financially rewarding but gives you that satisfying feeling of seeing your hobby turn into actual, paid work, yay! There are several companies around that have a bank of regular designers on their books, working on yarn promos and designing patterns, KAL/CALs and patterns with yarn kits. Other platforms send you the yarn support for on a design of your choice, following a flexible, simple brief sticking to a theme, and you can create what you want, upload the pattern to their website and you can charge what you like for people to download it. This translates into payments every month for you – what’s called a ‘passive income’ – but this can fluctuate a lot and be unpredictable. Some months you can get a lot of cash, some months quite little, but it’s a nice thing to have ticking over in the background. Just make sure that you know how much commission you’re getting. If a company has paid you a lump sum for your work they usually own the rights to it and can charge for it or offer it for free in their magazine, on their platform, etc. Make sure to get them to clarify if you can resell the pattern yourself if you’re unsure. I have worked with brands that pay a lump sum AND let you sell your pattern yourself as long as you don’t offer it for LESS than what they charge. If your pattern is being sold on a platform and you haven’t received monetary compensation for it, you should expect to earn 100% of what people spend, with nothing taken away.
Yarn support: Receiving yarn support from brands for specific designs, especially larger ones like garments and KALS/CALs, is a fab way of connecting with new yarn companies and offering them some advertising on your social media in return. If you have a big design in mind, why not consider approaching a brand you like to see if they can offer you some samples and potentially work together? This also means sales for them, as when people buy your pattern they will be encouraged to shop with the company that offered the yarn support to get the same look, rather than with competitors.
Approaching brands feels kind of cringe, though. Do people really do that? I used to think this until, years ago, I saw a big name designer posting about how it’s actually a good idea! “Really?!” I thought, “Asking for free stuff? That’s a bit entitled!” In short, I can totally see why it might seem that way, but with the rise of influencers and sponsored content, brands are more often than not very happy to send a selection of yarns to you in exchange for a couple of Instagram or TikTok (please don’t spell it TicToc 😑) posts, a yarn review on your blog, or similar. After all, it’s a transaction – you get the yarn, they get the publicity – and companies do budget for these kinds of collaborations. Brands might ask you what yarns you’d like to try or they might send you a variety of their newest range, or they might send a mystery box… It’s a really exciting way of expanding your network and putting your feelers out, as well as a potential way of working with brands on a more regular basis in the future. It does help if you have a decent amount of followers, because they will obviously want their yarn to be seen by as many people as possible, but don’t be shy! Of course, it is possible to be ignored by companies. Some will tell you outright that they aren’t interested, some might ghost you totally, but don’t be discouraged. Don’t be afraid of sending a well-written, concise and upbeat email to brands telling them about yourself, what you create and giving those all-important social media links and hope for a nice reply and an offer of lots of lovely free yarn.
How can I show off my work to potential collaborators? The ‘done thing’ now is really and truly preparing and maintaining a cohesive, attractive and professional Instagram feed, a handy digital portfolio of your work. As well as that, especially if applying for a specific call out from a brand or magazine (e.g; magazine A are looking for amigurumi designs based on the festive season”), creating a mood board of designs, colours, ideas, swatches, sketches, etc following that theme is not only profesh but fun to make. Have a play around on Canva or Photoshop (if you’re fancy) and take your time planning your ideas out. Send boards over to collaborators with links to all your social media so they get a full idea of your style as a designer and you can show off your talent to the max.
How will I know what’s expected of me? It’s so important to know about exactly what the brand requires from you before you start working on patterns for them, and to be realistic. For example, what are you expected to provide? Can you do the work they are asking? For example, I am not an amigurumi artist and I am, honestly, RUBBISH at it so I would always say no to these type of collabs, even if the money involved was good. I just know that my work would not be up to standard and others can do it better! Some brands allow you complete creative freedom, with only a small brief giving you a loose outline of the kind of design they’re after. Some brands are stricter and like to follow you step by step, making sure that you’re keeping to exactly the directions they’ve given. Both of these are absolutely fine ways of working, and in my experience the more relaxed ones are yarn brands, whereas magazines tend to be a lot more direct with that kind of designs and projects they are looking for, and that’s understandable.
That sounds great, but how much should I be charging for my work? One good thing to do is make your own little chart with a price range for each item you can make. For example, a small baby blanket design could sell for €80-€140 depending on the skill level, a larger one could be more expensive. It’s up to you how much you charge and having a ‘range’ rather than a fixed price makes it easier to negotiate with collaborators.
What if the pay offered is too low than I’m willing to accept? That’s a good reason to have a ‘range’ of prices per item, but know your worth. If it’s too low than you’re willing to accept then it’s perfectly fine to say no and set boundaries. Don’t worry about burning bridges or seeming precious because you are asking for a realistic and fair payment. In some cases, this can manifest as a brand offering only yarn as compensation for pattern that requires a great deal of work. For example, asking you to create a garment in sizes XXS – 5XL or a huge throw blanket or ANYTHING for absolutely no payment is, in my view, ridiculous, but it’s up to the individual. Some people are happy to design for almost-free (just yarn provided) but I don’t see this as fair and can be harmful to other independent designers. If one person works for nothing it can let all of us down and set a precedent. I have had the excuse of, ‘we’re a small business and can’t pay you very much’ to which I responded that I, too, was a small business and didn’t work for virtually nothing. We’ve all got bills to pay and this isn’t slave labour, knitting and crochet design is real work that should be valued and paid decently. I truly believe that if a brand can’t afford to pay designers a living wage then thy shouldn’t work with designers, full stop. This isn’t Shein.
Hmm. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for me to finish my designs. Is there a way of working out how long the deadline should be? Setting a realistic deadline is essential as you can plan your time more easily and your collaborators will know when to expect the finished product/pattern. Nobody enjoys working at top-speed, pulling all-nighters to finish your work the night before the deadline, so make sure you allow yourself time to enjoy working on the project in a calm, focused way, allowing time for any other work/family responsibilities you might have without burning yourself out! Some brands don’t even set deadlines, allowing you to take your sweet time, but this is unusual. Personally, I prefer having a deadline to keep me on my toes, but we’re all different!
Are there any red flags I should be looking out for? Although rare, it’s good to be aware of potential issues you can have when partnering with brands. Being aware of these things can help you on your journey as a designer and avoid getting into situations where what’s expected of you is unclear, leading to confusion and potential conflicts and being left out of pocket. Talking very personally, a design I had published years ago (when my account was just a wee baby and I didn’t know very much about this industry) actually happened because a fellow designer pulled out and they had an emergency. The item they asked me to design, have approved, and obviously make needed to be done in TWO WEEKS in THREE SIZES. Eeek! Needless to say, I had a few sleepless nights owing to both the actual making of the blinkin’ things and worrying about if my work was good enough, but I did it. The pay was very low, proper low. Joke-level low. Should I have asked for the fee to be higher given the short turnaround? Absolutely and categorically yes. Did I know it was a bit unfair of this publication to offer such a low fee for so much work in such a short period of time. Yes, yes, yes. Did I overlook it to get my work featured in such a prestigious magazine and give my brand/Instagram account a HUGE boost? YES. If that was offered to me now I would have told them politely to make the remuneration match the workload, but circumstances were different then. We live and learn, right?
What should I do if I’m asked to copy from other designers? It’s essential for brands to give you an idea of what kind of patterns they’d like you to create, colours, style, all that good stuff. However, what’s not good is when they cobble together a few designs and ask you to copy them as closely as possible. Your job as a designer is to come up with your own unique work and not create knock-offs. Get inspired but don’t copy from other makers, please. If someone asks you to do this they should be ashamed, really.
What if a brand changes their mind after agreeing on a design and wants me to change it in an unreasonable way? The key word here is ‘unreasonable’, because it’s okay (in my view) to be asked to change something a little if you haven’t reached that part of the agreed project yet. For example, imagine that you’ve agreed on the second half of a blanket to be mustard and pink stripes, but then the brand asks if it’s okay for you to use mint instead of pink? Sure, if you’ve got that shade handy and you accept that, why not. But when you’re 90% through a sample and the brand asks you to rip back your work 200 rows, meaning that you’ve wasted your time (time is money) just because they’ve changed their mind on a whim, erm… That isn’t very dope of them. If they ask you to do that, you can either say no or drastically increase the fee to compensate for the wasted work, but I’d go for the former. To avoid this happening, make sure that both parties are happy with the work to be done, agree on the design together, make sketches, maybe have a Zoom meeting, and then start. Communication is key!
What should I do if I’m ghosted after talking to a brand? Oof! This is a bad one. I once got to the final negotiations stage of a collaboration with a small/medium yarny craft e-commerce platform and heard nothing back, even after sending a follow-up email. It’s trashy behavior but it does happen, as does getting stood up for meetings, all of that. Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is move on, shrug it off, roll your eyes and say ‘BYE FELICIA’ and get on with your day! You do develop a thick skin over time, and thankfully the overwhelming majority of brands are wonderful to work with and it is pretty uncommon to face this stuff.
Who pays for P&P if I have to send samples? The publication or brand should be doing this. Make sure you remember to add it on to the invoice, attaching proof of postage. My experience of this? A company I designed three items for refused to pay for international P&P and I ended up €50 out of pocket and making a loss instead of profit. Cruddy on their part but also ignorant on mine for not checking beforehand, because it would have been a no from me. Bestie, promise me that you’ll always check the brand’s P&P policy to avoid nightmares like that!
I still get flashbacks of that event which make me look like that staring cupcake dog from that famous meme from a while back…
All in all, the key to working with brands is knowing your limits, identifying what is too much to ask and recognising your value as a designer, artist, creator, professional! It really doesn’t matter how many followers you have or how long you’ve been designing, you are worthy. Be confident, take time building up your brad and presence and put yourself out there. Magical things will come and your talent will shine.
What have been your experiences of brand collaborations? Let me know in the comments and happy designing!
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