ULA+LIA Changes and Feedback 2025
Hey Everybody,
I think I'm finally ready for some constructive feedback as we're about a month after shipping Kickstarter orders, so even all international orders should finally be settling down and I can receive that input as well. I'm hoping to dicuss and receive feedback about some changes for next year.
**For individual customer service issues (e.g. package not received, received wrong items, an unacceptable number of knots in a skein, etc) please send me an email to info@ulaandlia.com directly, unless you beleive it to be a wider quality control issue that the community needs to be made aware of.**
Preamble
I starting to write this originally expecting to post directly on Ravelry but the post ended up turning into a 2000 word essay, so I decided to edit it down a bit but also include links to direct topics if you're most interested in those. If you'd like more details, please click the links for an extended explanation. Feel free to leave comments here, but consider joining the discussion on our Ravelry group if you find this directly on our website.
Here are all the topics and changes I'm planning to make covered in this post, so feel free to jump straight to those sections if they are of particular interest to you:
Current State, Goals, and Philosophy of ULA+LIA
A view of the USA side of the company as well as a few poor experieinces with companies recently that solidified my thoughts on what product quality and customer service is and how I want that to shape ULA+LIA in the future.
I plan to shift to FedEx for international shipments, at least in the EU, UK, and Canada. 3-5 days for delivery with no processing fees, although you will probably pay VAT.
There were more white guard hairs than expected in this years sheep wool. Do you like it or hate it?
Due to issues with receiving ordered quanities and colors of fibers over the previous two years, I'm shifting sourcing to the reorganized group of cooperatives we've worked with in the past.
Our yak wool will be moving from baby yak wool to yak wool in general, although there should not be a difference in quality.
Changes Intiated from Last Year
Me patting myself on the back for doing a couple small things I said I'd try to do from the last constructive feedback thread
There will be a new thread for this. Please help me decide if I should initiate a QC system and what limits are acceptable for things like knots, weight variance, and dye fastness. (Link to Ravelry thread)
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ULA+LIA Currently
I'm pretty happy and satisfied currently with the size of ULA+LIA. For context, my mom, my dad, and I sent out 11,356 skeins of yarn (or items, as there were some socks and things) in the week of fulfillment to over 1400 customers. Outside of Kickstarter, there's usually an order or two a day on average through the website, depending a bit on season, sales, and any email marketing. For anything techincal or customer service related, it's just me, so if you write an email or comment anywhere, I'm the only one that will respond. Around Kickstarter it can get rather intense, but it's at a level I can handle fine.
Customer service is also, generally speaking, only needed when there are issues with quality, and I think ULA+LIA can handle a small amount of growth if some of these quality issues can be streamlined. Most (a lot of) companies tend to start out with quality products and good customer service, but both tend to trail off over time. I refuse to let this happen to ULA+LIA, and there were a couple things that happened recently that made it more obvious and turned this from a general idea into a stated goal for me.
How I Value Other Companies
As I've grown older and moved away from fast fashion, I spend a lot of time researching to find companies that offer quality items. I buy clothes for quality, and not brand name, so it can be difficult to find these gems of brands. Especially these days with AI, fake accounts, fake reviews, etc., it can be very confusing.
For example, there is a Canadian company that is exceptionally known for making incredible 100% cotton sweatpants and sweatshirts. A few years ago, if you searched for 'best 100% cotton hoodie/sweatpants/etc' they would come up in the conversations. Heavy weight, 100% made in Canada, but expensive. Something like $150 or so for a cotton hoodie, but you get what you pay for. Recently, they were bought out by a private equity company, which now outsourced all production to Vietnam. There's nothing inherantly wrong with this, but I like companies to have a reason to sourcing and producing where they do. I find it hard to swallow if a company's culture and hertitage is destroyed just to save $30 on a sweater, regardless if the savings are passed on to consumers.
I've not ordered since so I can't claim if the quality has actually gone down, but the industry trend is for brands like this to get bought out, reduce quality of materials/production/customer service to save money, and make as much money off the brand name as possible until people catch on.
A second example is an American company called that will generally pop up if you search for "best flannel". They own their own marino herds in Montana, and use their own wool to make their own clothes. Their flannel are 100% wool, made in USA, and around $275. I'd never spent that kind of money on a shirt before, but gave it a shot. It was 100% my favorite shirt ever. Built like a tank, fit like a glove, beautiful in color, everything. I have no doubt it will last me for decades with decent care.
Unfortunately, I ordered another one (the same shirt name, style, product page) two weeks ago in a different color. It showed up and the material seemed different, the collar/neck width (among other measurements) was two inches longer. Other small details were missing. The pictures (and size chart) still showed the same shirt I had previously ordered. I emailed customer service with photos of the issues and was told it was a new model redsigned last year. There's no mention of this on the site. I issued a return, and they are still charging an $8.50 restocking fee eventhough they didn't send me what I ordered. I'm beyond heated about it.
These two experiences, along with a couple other good experiences with companies, solidified my ideas about what quality products and customer service actually means and how to want ULA+LIA to represent both.
International Shipping
Poor international shipping service is a huge mistake I've made and I refuse to put myself or my customers through it anymore.
Going forward, I'm planning to move all international shipments (of 4 or more skeins) to FedEx. I've done some testing with this so far to England and Canada (and to Germany) and there doesn't seem to be extra processing fees like we've seen with UPS in the past. You will most likely still have to pay VAT (this is the standard), but a few shipments to the UK somehow skirted through without getting dinged, even though they were much over the limit. I haven't done a ton of shipments yet with fedex, so hard to get a clear picture of what the actual chances of getting through without duties are. In short though, expect to pay VAT.
Shipping is 3-5 days, so everybody should be getting their packages together. Shipping is only marginally more expensive this way and the customer experience should be improved dramatically. For the 200g packages or under, it will still be the old way with consolidators.
It's been a bad experience for international customers, and dealing with lost/delayed packages on my end makes me want to throw my head through a wall. I refuse to do it any longer, so better for everybody!
My research and confirmation about each exact region is not yet finished here, so there may be further updates and changes in the future.
Sheep Wool Blend
I haven't had much (any) feedback about this yet, and I don't know if it's because people don't mind it (or like it) or they are just waiting for this thread. In short though, the dehairing process with the sheepwool wasn't as thorough as it had been in the past, which left some white hairs still in the yarn. This isn't completely unique to wool yarn in general, but it's not been part of our yarn previously and I wasn't expecting it. I found it to be particularly visable in the amethyste. It wasn't obvious in the undyed fiber, so I didn't notice it until the yarn was already spun up.
How big of an issue has this been for you? I haven't been able to play with the yarn much yet, so I don't know if it creates problems for skin feel. For the future, I'd like to go back to our previous aesthetic, unless this is a look that people are interested in. I have a wool coat with these types of flecks that is a bit cool, but it's not what I was expecting for the yarn.
These types of issues are literally what I lose sleep over, whether justified or not.
If you start working with it and are not happy, please send me an email to info@ulaandlia.com
Future Sourcing
Over the past couple of years I've been running into problems with the cooperative group I've settled in with. In short, the fiber quantities (and sometimes base colors) that I preorder and put deposits for haven't been completely fulfilled. It's been manageable, but sometimes batch sizes need to be reduced for colors or dye recipes altered if the natural base colors are switched.
Luckily it's not been to the level that I was too short to produce a color, but it leads to quite a bit of stress when I've already taken preorders on Kickstarter and I don't receive everything I ordered. When I have already presold yarn on Kickstarter and have stated it as being sourced from a particular cooperative and region in Mongolia, it's also not really possible for me to just get extra fiber from elsewhere and blend it together. Even if it were, the more rare fibers like baby camel wool or yak wool aren't generally further available later in the season when I take delivery and find out the order is short. I feel like I may be somewhat of a second class customer compared to other larger international fashion house clients they may also provide to, so if harvest is smaller than expected, I'm the one that gets shafted. I have no evidence of this, but it's a feeling I get.
I'm trying to keep this somewhat concise, but I worked with a larger group of cooperatives 3 or 4 years ago called the SCU (Sustainable Cashmere Union) that legally needed to be reorganized do to changing laws in Mongolia. The coops I've been working with over the last few years chose independence rather than joining the new group of cooperatives, and I stayed with them as that's where the majority of my fiber was coming from anyways. At this point, I plan to move back to the reorganized members at the SCU which has built a much better and more organized centalized system. I will have more info about the exact regions and fiber qualities we'll be purchasing shortly after returning to Mongolia.
I'm confident the fiber will be either the same or of a better quality as well as more consistent from season to season.
Baby Yak Wool
The new cooperatives I plan to be working with do not procure specifically baby yak wool, but yak wool in general. With proper dehairing and processing, the difference is very small or not existant, although I'll need to confirm this with more quantitative testing. As this was and has been one of the biggest issues with my procurement in the last few years, this would solve a huuuge issue for me. This would also make availability of the platinum gray (the rarest color) much less of an issue.
In short, the naming will change (to just yak wool) but I don't expect the quality to change.
Initiated Changes from 2024
Referencing our feedback thread from 2024 on ravelry here.
- I'm happy with the upgraded quality of polymailers, as there seemed to be less issues with tearing and ripping. I HATE both using boxes to send products and receiving boxes from other companies when I make orders. I understand it improves the unboxing experieince, but I find them to be extremely wasteful (and expensive) to ship an unbreakable good. I don't plan to change this going forward, where possible. I'm open to ideas for improving the unboxing experience, although I would like to keep waste as low as possible.
- Newly spun skeins do have a small code on the back of the label to denote the batch, both for dyed and natural colors
- We did get new color swatches made prior to the Kickstarter, so I think that helped reduce issues with planned vs produced colors.
- Due to changes in box labeling for Kickstarter fulfillment, I think we also reduced the error rate a bit in packing. You may have noticed on packing slips each SKU had a number (e.g. #108 was dark harbor blue fingering weight, #89 was evergreen fingering. Having the numbers written on the boxes made orders A LOT easier to fill and improved accuracy.
Not so much about feedback here but just a change I'm moving towards in general, but I did succesfully reduce a large amount of inventory (as planned) to make stock and inventory control a bit easier. I still hope to reduce the number of SKUs slightly, but keep a larger amount in classic colors going forward.
Quality Control System
In conjunction with the preamble, this could be one of the biggest changes for ULA+LIA going forward if initiated, although I think this is going to require a larger amount of community feedback to set up a proper system, so I'm making a separate thread for it. Please join the coversation in this thread on Ravelry to let me know how to better control knots, skein weights, dye fastness, and other things and what's acceptable to you in a high quality skein of knitting yarn.
I think that's it for now! As always, please send an email to info@ulaandlia.com with any questions comments or concerns.
Thank you,
Jon
