Our business has been open now for over two months and we’ve been really happy with the response to date. Locals seem to love having their own wool shop. Knitters are delighted and many others seem tempted to pick up their long abandoned knitting skills again and join in.

We’ve also had plenty of visitors – and now they’re not just the “We were driving through the area and decided to pop in” type, but those who have heard about us and make the special trip. All of this so far by word of mouth.

We’re now hitting our straps with advertising to get the word out far and wide – there’s no specialty knitting shop within coee of us and we also know our stock is very different to that found in other shops. So far we’ve joined Mudgee Regional Tourism which lists us on their website and allows us to place brochures in all the local Tourist Information Centres.

And we now have our brochures. Well, actually brochures, bookmarks and business cards, which we are so happy with. These are finding homes in lots of locations and shortly I’ll do a mail out to B&Bs and local motels.

Our first advertisement appears this month in the local Discover magazine and we are fortunate in having a major editorial accompany it. This is already bringing people into the shop within the first weekend.

The local media are very supportive and we’ve had an opening article in the Mudgee Guardian as well as a radio interview on ABC Central West.

Ravelry, the knitter’s social media mecca, is a great help and we will be running ads there next. And, of course, we are doing what we can on Facebook and blogs to keep people engaged.

The combination of more traditional advertising as well as word of mouth, social media and public relations is working well for us – but we know we need to keep it up and not get complacent.

At the moment though, it’s lots of fun and very exciting.