Craft
Insights

Distributors need to know where their lines are getting through and where they are not. Craft Insights tracks which shops are already buying in a category, which represent untapped wholesale opportunity in a region, and how channel structure has shifted when brands change hands.

One acquisition in December 2025 placed 12 international specialty brands and the primary US wholesale path to independent fiber crafting retailers—local yarn stores, needlework shops, and similar—under the same corporate group as Lion Brand, the Orchard Yarn & Thread / Knitting Fever deal. That is the kind of structural change that reshapes who a distributor is actually competing with and which paths to market are now controlled by a single group. Craft Insights maps those structures as they happen.

Manufacturers need to know where shops want what they make but can’t get it through their current wholesale relationships. That is a different question from “who doesn’t carry my products.” The answer isn’t a coverage gap. It’s a fit gap: what the wholesale channel is moving versus what shops and their customers are actually asking for. Craft Insights maps that difference by region, fiber type, and yarn construction.

Some fiber crafting retailers—local yarn stores, needlework shops, and similar—are actively looking to move away from supply chains they cannot see into, or from brands that have moved under corporate ownership that conflicts with the values of their customers. Craft Insights tracks ownership structures, brand provenance, and what changed when. If a brand your store has been buying from is now under different corporate control, or if you want to identify independent alternatives in a category your current suppliers have consolidated, that is a question Craft Insights is built to answer.

Regional fiber organizations are mapping local supply chains: who farms which fibers, who processes them, who can spin or dye or finish locally, and how those relationships connect into a functioning regional system. Craft Insights tracks mills and processors by service capability and geographic location. If your question is who mills woolen-spun yarn in the Western US, or which processors in your region are currently taking orders for scouring and carding, the infrastructure to answer that is here. The platform also tracks the events that anchor regional fiber communities, from yarn crawls and farm tours to regional festivals, with participation records that show who is present and where.

Fiber festivals, regional yarn crawls, farm tours, and trade shows are tracked as structured data with geographic coverage and participation records. Maryland Sheep and Wool, Rhinebeck, the PA Yarn Quest, the NJ Wool Walk, the NY Fiber Trail. The same infrastructure that serves industry participants also surfaces which events are happening, who participates in them, and where they are, for anyone trying to plan attendance or find the fiber community in their area.