The couple started a business with $200 and now has an annual revenue of over $7 million

In recent years, personalized DIY handmade products have been very popular, but due to the characteristics of these products, they cannot be mass-produced, which has discouraged many sellers who want to enter the market.

However, one couple found a different way and solved the problem of slow production of handmade products by selling material packages, which perfectly fits the habit of overseas users who like to do it themselves.

They started a business with $200, and now their annual revenue exceeds $7 million

In 2017, an Asian-American couple, Zhang and Tiu, founded the DIY knitting kit brand The Woobles , which is dedicated to enabling beginners to make simple knitted toys by themselves.

Before founding The Woobles, both of them had jobs that seemed glamorous to outsiders. Zhang was a trader on Wall Street, while Tiu worked as a user experience designer at Google. By chance, Tiu taught herself to knit woolen toys as gifts for her friends. Although she had no experience at all, the bumpy production process made the gift more precious, and it also gave her a great sense of accomplishment.

Since then, crocheting has become a way for her to relieve stress after work. Gradually, Tiu found that she wanted to do something truly meaningful rather than a monotonous nine-to-five life. So after investigating the market environment at the time, the couple hit it off and spent $200 to purchase yarn and domain names, and created their own brand website The Woobles, officially starting their entrepreneurial career.

At the beginning of their business, Zhang and Tiu quickly realized the problems with the brand. Since the products only consisted of yarn and tools, it was difficult to sell them at a high price. How to add extra value to the products became a top priority. After some discussion, the couple decided to build the brand into one that allows users to enjoy the fun and sense of accomplishment of knitting. This also explains why yarn that costs $3 can be sold for more than $30.

In July 2020, The Woobles attracted a lot of fans through social media. Later, The Woobles participated in the well-known American business show "Shark Tank", which made the brand gain huge attention.

Relevant data shows that when participating in the show in 2022, The Woobles' total sales had exceeded 5.3 million US dollars, and it was expected to reach 7 million US dollars by the end of that year. Now The Woobles' annual revenue has already exceeded 7 million US dollars.

Multi-channel layout, The Woobles ranked on the BS list of the category on Amazon

At the beginning, the couple mainly sold the brand's knitted sets through Etsy. Later, their sales channels continued to expand. They not only entered e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, but also set up well-known American offline handicraft retail stores such as Michaels and Joann Fabrics.

Of course, The Woobles’ most important sales channel is its branded independent website. When you click on thewoobles.com, most users will be impressed by its bright and colorful visual design.

The Woobles's banner on the homepage says that even beginners can learn to knit woolen toys, which directly expands its audience to ordinary consumers besides enthusiasts. Scrolling down, The Woobles also posted a large number of user feedback photos, with the caption "It's very simple, everyone can learn it." These vivid examples will undoubtedly dispel the doubts of some consumers, making them believe that people with "disabled hands" can also make beautiful knitted toys.

On the other hand, The Woobles also provides consumers with services such as free shipping for orders over $50 and a 14-day return period, which further increases consumers' trust in the brand and helps with the final conversion.

In addition to its independent website, The Woobles also performed very well on platforms such as Amazon. Take Amazon as an example. A classic product of The Woobles took the first place in the BS list of knitwear products on the platform. Data shows that this listing has accumulated 4,039 reviews so far, with an overall score of 4.5 points, of which 75% have 5-star scores, which is enough to show consumers' recognition of the brand.

On Etsy, which was the first to enter the market, data also showed that The Woobles' store sales reached over 16,000, with 2,422 reviews. However, it can be seen that due to the decline in the popularity of the platform, The Woobles has already reduced its investment in the platform.

For The Woobles, if it can make consumers develop a hobby of knitting, it is equivalent to cultivating a long-term consumer. To this end, The Woobles needs to use appropriate marketing channels to fully display its brand and products.

Social Media Marketing at The Woobles

As a founder with a background in a large company, Tiu is well aware of the importance of social media. Since its inception, The Woobles has registered accounts on social media platforms including Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Pinterest. Later, it also took advantage of the opportunity to enter TikTok and enjoyed a lot of traffic dividends.

On Youtube, The Woobles has accumulated over 300,000 followers, which is a height that many brands and even professional influencers envy. In terms of content, most of The Woobles' videos cleverly insert products through simple plots, without any sense of disobedience. However, I don't know if it is because of the emergence of TikTok, The Woobles' account on Youtube has not been updated for more than 4 months, but it has maintained a high level of activity on TikTok.

After looking at The Woobles’ TikTok account, I can understand why brands don’t use YouTube anymore, because TikTok is so popular. Although it has not been on the platform as long as YouTube, its number of fans has skyrocketed to 330,000, and its video likes have exceeded 6.7 million.

On average, the videos released by The Woobles have over 10,000 views, and the occasional hit can even reach hundreds of thousands of views. This is a pretty good result considering that The Woobles releases an average of one video per day.

Of course, in addition to the influence of the brand itself, this is also inseparable from the traffic brought by the platform. Data shows that the crochet tag #crochet has been viewed over 20 billion times on TikTok, and the emojis for learning knitting have also been viewed 100 million times. With this popularity, the explosion of The Woobles has become a natural thing.

Looking at the entrepreneurial story of The Woobles, Tiu and Zhang can be said to be a model of turning a hobby into a career. However, the reason why they were successful is more importantly their keen observation of the market and the brand story they gave to their products. These are the real reasons why consumers pay for them.

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Entrepreneurship