5 Things I Am Proud Of From 5 Years of The Fabled Thread

At the end of May, it was our 5th birthday at The Fabled Thread. Last year I wrote about 4 lessons I had learnt from 4 years; this year, I want to tell you about the 5 things I am most proud of – on a personal level – from the last 5 years of the business. This isn’t some glossy round-up of achievements, but the more personal side of small business successes, the kind that often go uncelebrated.

As a side note, I actually fell over a couple of years ago climbing over a stile and landed splat on my phone, crushing the whole thing (which really does make you question how many pastries you’ve been eating when you see the level of damage you can do to a phone screen just by sitting on it). At the time, I was one of those very foolish people who never backed anything up. So, in one fell swoop, I lost three years' worth of photos and videos from the early days of The Fabled Thread (and, very sadly, from Roger’s puppy years too). I often feel a bit sad about not being able to access those pictures – not so much for myself (I know what went on during those years) – but because it means I can never do the glossy “I started from my bedroom, now I’m here” type reels. Which I’m sure you’re all quietly grateful for, because the last thing we need is another person glorifying their small business journey in 60 seconds of total fantasy.

Anyway, that’s why I never seem to do a very good “Instagram” version of our birthday celebration – it’s always fewer pictures and more words, because I simply don’t have the photos to show.

So, this year, rather than a round-up of events or magazine features or product collaborations and so on, I want to share the things that actually stick with me – the things I am personally proudest of from five years of running The Fabled Thread. Because at the end of the day, the glossy highlights fade away, and it’s these moments that really matter.

To be completely honest, we’re not quite where I thought we’d be five years in – at least not from a purely financial perspective. I’d listened to far too many podcasts about hockey-stick growth and launched during Covid, which, frankly, skewed my sense of reality a bit. But we are miles ahead in terms of what we’ve built for the long term, and where I see us heading. Along the way, I’ve made decisions that meant prioritising product over volume, authenticity over aggressive growth, and stability over risk. So, while it’s taken a little longer, and our ten-year goal now feels a bit more realistic, here are the things I’m truly proud of from the past five years.

Starting a business is brutal. Don’t listen to all those podcasts that glorify the journey – yes, it’s brilliant and exciting, of course it is – but it’s also rife with self-doubt, emotional battles, stress and uncertainty. For every ten things that go really well, there are another ten that go completely wrong. And learning to face those things head on – to keep going, to put on a brave face, to make decisions when I’m scared, to back myself when I’m unsure – that’s been the making of me.

I’m a fundamentally different person after five years of The Fabled Thread in a way I never would have been after five more years of investment banking. That career might be brutal in terms of hours, but it doesn’t challenge you on a personal or emotional level in quite the same way. I’ve learnt far more about myself through having to keep going, through being the one who has to make the call when things are hard, than I ever did by just working long days.

There have been so many moments when I’ve wanted to throw the towel in, hand the responsibility to someone else, or just blame someone – when our first website development company folded and took all my savings with them, leaving me with nothing to show for it; when the second agency effectively held my website hostage; when a team member I trusted turned on me; when I realised we’d been double-paying shipping fees for months with no obvious way out. But I didn’t quit. I put on my big girl pants and kept going.

And in doing that – through both the highs and the total messes – I’ve built resilience. I’ve learnt that just as the good times don’t last forever, neither do the bad ones. Everything is solvable, in business and in life. And because of these last five years, I know I’m stronger – more grounded in my judgement, more sure of my ability to weather things, more committed to seeing things through.

On a personal level, that’s something I’m incredibly proud of.

Five years ago, there was no Fabled Thread. No studio, no jobs, no team, no culture. The day-to-day life that my team and I now share has been built entirely from scratch – from absolutely nothing, we’ve created something quite magnificent. When I’m out of the studio for a week and I see orders coming in and going out, when I spot stories on our Instagram from days I wasn’t even there, when things just happen without my involvement, when we sit around talking about future plans – I look at it all and think: from nothing but an idea on a piece of paper, now there is this.

Coming into the studio is always joyful. I have a team who genuinely enjoy each other’s company, who care deeply about the work we do, who are thoughtful about the experience of our customers, and who – crucially – are happy to be at work. We eat lunch together and stitch; no one disappears off on their own. They even started their own evening craft club without me – the studio feels like a place they want to be in, even after hours. And during the day, there are often these lovely quiet stretches where everyone is just working away, listening to an audiobook together. That, to me, tells you everything you need to know about what it’s like to be there.

I’ve worked in more than my fair share of challenging office environments – the ones that come with a sinking feeling when you arrive, a creeping Sunday dread, that strange awkwardness even around making a cup of tea. So to now have a workplace that feels light, kind, collaborative – a place where people clearly enjoy being and (I hope!) know how appreciated they are – that’s something I couldn’t be prouder of.

Of course, I don’t put this down to me alone. From Georgina, my very first hire, to Esme, our most recent, every person who has joined us has brought with them their own kind, generous and thoughtful way of working. All I’ve really tried to do is make sure people feel supported, that we all get time to sit together, and that no one feels afraid of making mistakes. This team, and the culture we’ve created together, makes me endlessly proud.

When I started this business, I had quite a narrow set of reasons for wanting to begin: (1) I wanted to do something more creative, (2) I wanted to have more control over my life, and (3) I wanted a dog – something that just wasn’t possible in my old career. I loved sewing, of course, but sewing kits felt like a fairly straightforward product. While stitching had a profound impact on me personally, I saw that as quite an individual journey. I didn’t fully appreciate just how powerful it could be for other people.

I certainly didn’t set out with some grand purpose or glossy mission statement. But over the past five years, that’s shifted – slowly and quite beautifully – as I’ve seen the very real impact The Fabled Thread has had on people’s lives.

If I were giving advice to someone starting a business now, I’d say this: create something that improves someone else’s life, however small the effect. Because when things get tough – and they will – it’s not your own ego or a financial metric that keeps you going. It’s the message from a customer saying your kit helped them through a hard time, or the photo of something they’ve made that they’re genuinely proud of. It’s knowing that your work, however modest, has meaning for someone else. That’s what gives you the resilience to keep showing up.

When I first began, I had no idea how often customers might return, or how personally I’d come to know them – the creative journeys I’d get to witness, the relationships I’d form, the growing sense of being part of something bigger than just a business. The quilt that a group of customers stitched for me (you can read about it here) is the most treasured thing I own – not just because it’s beautiful, but because of what it represents. It’s a symbol of everything we’ve built together: not just a company, but a community. Not just a product, but a shared experience.

This small but mighty hobby has far more power than it’s often given credit for, and I’m proud – truly proud – to be able to champion it.

As I mentioned at the beginning, when I started the business, there was no grand masterplan for what it might become – and I certainly didn’t imagine it looking quite the way it does five years on. I honestly don’t think there’s a directly comparable example to The Fabled Thread out there. Now, maybe every founder feels that way about what they’ve built, but I really do believe we’ve carved out our own path – both creatively and in terms of our product offering.

We’re in a part of the market that’s often overlooked, a bit traditional, a bit staid – and, let’s be honest, sometimes a little repetitive. Within that, we’ve done something different. The fact that we’ve had press coverage in places like Vogue, How To Spend It, and Elle – not exactly the standard stomping grounds for embroidery and needlepoint kits – is a reflection of that difference.

But the thing is, it takes a fair bit of bravery to go your own way. To do something different, you’ve got to persuade people to trust you, to come along with you, to give it a go. Right now, nearly half our orders are for kits that come with unpainted frames – which means we’ve not only convinced people to pick up embroidery, we’ve also persuaded them to pick up a paintbrush too. Our designs are often quite out there, not just in how they look compared to other kits, but in their ambition – in style, in technique, in the sheer level of difference. The Woolies are a perfect example of that.

Then there’s our membership platform, which offers everything from articles, videos and craft guides to refill kits and studio days – and yet hundreds and hundreds of people have chosen to put their hard-earned money into signing up, trusting that what we’re offering is worth it. That trust means the world.

The breadth of our range, and the slightly unconventional way we go about selling it, has taken courage. It’s far easier to design one simple product and scale it – but we’ve chosen complexity, and, as you’d expect, scaling complexity is… well, complex. To get people to follow your vision, to generously share your expertise, and to somehow keep the whole thing shoppable in a vaguely clear and coherent way – that doesn’t just require confidence, it takes a lot of investment too. We’ve had to educate, not just sell.

So when I said earlier that we’re not quite where I imagined we’d be financially at five years, I do think we probably could have been, if we’d played things differently. When we first had a product with clear demand – the musicians and their painted frames – we could have leaned hard into that and scaled fast. If we’d done that, we might have hit those five-year targets quicker, but I think we’d be floundering now, not knowing where to go next.

As it is, we’ve taken a slower, steadier route – and it’s led us to a place where the future feels full of possibility. We may not have raced there, but we’ve arrived with a strong foundation and a real sense of purpose. And for that, I’m glad we did it our way.

With all that in mind, the final thing I’m proud of – and possibly the one that underpins everything else – is the patience we’ve had to practise, day in, day out, over the last five years. Patience isn’t something people tend to shout about when talking about running a business, especially in eCommerce, where the pressure is usually on to scale quickly, to drive repeat purchases, and to show fast results.

In this world, people don’t just talk about customer return rates, they talk about cohort return timings – essentially, how soon someone comes back to shop again. The accepted wisdom is that you want customers returning often, and quickly, to see real growth. It’s why so many businesses try to get you onto a subscription – whether it’s dog food, toothbrush heads, or scented candles – because regularity is easier to scale than occasional delight.

The problem, of course, is that sewing kits don’t really fit that model. Our kits take time – sometimes a month, sometimes a year or more. So it’s perfectly normal for someone to buy a kit in 2022 and not come back until 2024. Or to return once a year, every year. That doesn’t mean they’re not engaged or loyal, it just means they’re still happily stitching their way through the first one.

It’s the same story when we launch a new design. We don’t tend to have massive launch days – if anything, they’re often quite modest. That’s because people might absolutely love the design, but it’s not a jumper or a vase you can pop on the shelf straight away. You need the time, headspace, and enthusiasm to actually make it. So instead of impulse buys, we get people saying, “Ooh, I love that, I’ll do it next,” and then quietly returning six months later when they’re ready.

When we launched something like our Build Your Own Bargello range, we honestly had no idea for the first few months whether it was going to be a hit or a total flop. It wasn’t until around six months post-launch that we started to see the numbers come through – enough to show us that people had been paying attention, they were just coming back in their own time.

So what I’ve learnt – through every product launch, every new idea, every shift in direction – is that patience is essential. You have to give things space to breathe. You can’t always judge success in the first week, or even the first quarter. You have to hold your nerve and trust the process.

We’ve had a really strong year, and while there’s no doubt some momentum to that, I genuinely believe it’s mostly because the seeds we planted in the early years are only just now starting to bear fruit. The customers who first discovered us years ago are coming back, and those reorders – those quiet confirmations that people really do love what we’re doing – are finally coming through.

But that patience hasn’t only been professional – it’s been personal, too. To be completely honest, both my husband and I have had to be incredibly patient about what we can and can’t do in our lives, as he’s helped subsidise our lives for far longer than we ever anticipated whilst I reinvest everything back into the business. It’s meant holding back, digging deep, and resisting the temptation to make short-term decisions just for the sake of quick results.

The thing is, patience also gives you perspective. It’s shown me just how quickly five years can pass, and how worthwhile it’s been. If you’d told me back at the start that it would take five years to get to a place where I finally felt the business was performing properly – well, I might never have begun. The thought of sacrificing so much without a guaranteed result would have felt impossible.

But I did begin. And having gone through it – the graft, the uncertainty, the slower-than-hoped-for progress – and come out the other side, I know now it was worth every bit of it. So as I look ahead to the next five years – likely another phase of steady, gradual growth – I don’t feel anxious. I don’t mind the time it’s going to take. The journey itself is proving to be rather good fun.

When I look back over these five years, what stands out most aren’t the milestones you’d write in a press release or the numbers you’d put in a pitch deck. What I feel proud of are the things you can’t really quantify: the resilience it’s taken to keep going, the team and culture that have blossomed from scratch, the joy of helping people find creativity again, the nerve it’s taken to build something that doesn’t look like everything else, and the patience – always the patience – to let it unfold in its own time.

We’re not where I thought we’d be. We’re somewhere better.

And if it’s taken us a little longer to get here, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.