Why I’m Stepping Back from Instagram

Last Thursday, I logged onto Instagram from my personal account and, for the first time ever, there was a new story on The Fabled Thread Instagram that I didn’t recognize. I clicked on it to see a picture of Joanne and Esme working away in the sunshine of the studio, and I knew Jen had taken it, written the caption, and posted it while I was working at home. That might sound remarkably mundane, but for me, it was quite an emotional experience.

For the last five years, a huge chunk of my life has been dominated by Instagram. This platform is what I launched the business on, it’s where most of our community resides, and for the first four years, it was really our only route to market. It was—and to some extent, still is—the lifeblood of our business. Running your own business is not like many other jobs—you live and breathe it every minute of the day. And given our reliance on Instagram as a platform, it has been my most constant companion for years.

But after months of planning, I made the decision that the time had come to hand over management of our social media to Jen. To many of you, this may not sound like a huge thing, but for me, it’s not a decision I have taken lightly. It’s one I have fretted about, gone back and forth on. So, I wanted to write to you all about this decision, why I think it’s important both personally and professionally, and what we hope to achieve through it. This decision ties into a lot of the process of growing as a founder and as a business owner.

When I started The Fabled Thread, Instagram wasn’t just a marketing tool—it was everything. It was how people discovered us, how we built our brand, and how our business grew. Our products are deeply visual, and in the early days—especially during the Covid lockdown—it was the perfect platform to connect with thousands of people who loved interiors, textiles, and the joy of making things by hand.

More than just a place to showcase our work, Instagram became the beating heart of our business. Every feature in a magazine, every PR opportunity, every collaboration we landed—it all stemmed from someone finding us on Instagram first. It wasn’t just a marketing channel; it became our shopfront, the place where we built trust, credibility, and a real sense of community.

But it was more than just business. Instagram allows me to have direct conversations with customers every day. I could ask for feedback, test new ideas, and share behind-the-scenes glimpses into our creative process. Over time, this two-way interaction became invaluable—it helped shape the direction of our products and gave us an engaged, vibrant community that spanned the world.

At one point, a huge percentage of our website traffic came directly from Instagram. It wasn’t just about visibility; it was the main driver of our sales and growth. And while that’s changed slightly as we’ve expanded into other areas, Instagram has remained one of the most immediate and personal ways to connect with the people who love what we do.

Like many founders, my relationship with Instagram has been complicated. When things were going well, it felt like a dream. There’s a real dopamine hit when a post resonates, when the algorithm works in your favour, when your audience grows. The validation, the excitement—it’s intoxicating.

But the good times don’t last forever. When engagement dipped, when reach faltered, when posts didn’t land the way I hoped, it was incredibly hard not to take it personally. It felt like my self-worth was tied to the performance of a platform that dictated so much of our business’s visibility.

And beyond that, social media has no off switch. There are no office hours. It’s always there, an ever-present hook keeping me tethered to the business. I’d reach for my phone instinctively, and before I knew it, I was deep in a spiral of checking comments, responding to messages, or worrying about what I should be posting next. It was 100% addictive.

While I deeply value the relationships we’ve built and the ability to communicate directly with our customers, I also found the emotional impact of Instagram could be a bit debilitating. The highs were exhilarating, but the lows could be crushing.

A few years ago, I wrote extensively about the toll managing our Instagram had taken on me. Since then, I’ve made huge strides in reshaping my relationship with it—learning to step back, to set boundaries, to regain control. But even with those changes, it still played a bigger role in my daily life than I wanted. I stitch because I want to switch off, because I want to reduce my screentime, so there is an irony in how much time I inevitably found myself sitting on my phone. And whilst we can kid ourselves about having the discipline to go on and only do the task at hand, inevitably I would get sucked down a rabbit hole of videos of dogs or some celebrity gossip which brought nothing positive to my life.

Over the last 18 months, I’ve made a conscious effort to diversify our business beyond Instagram. We launched a YouTube channel, introduced a membership program in The Studio, added a blog to our website, and put significant focus on SEO. These changes were strategic, designed to give us more stability and independence from a single platform.

Unexpectedly, this shift also changed my relationship with Instagram for the better. With other places to focus my energy, I was able to enjoy Instagram for what it is—our most direct way to communicate with customers—without the constant pressure of it being our sole lifeline. It became a space for connection rather than an obligation – if I posted some stories great, but if I didn’t have anything to say, I didn’t feel I had to.

At the same time, I introduced firm boundaries to regain control of my time and mental space. I set self-control timers, restricting my access to Instagram between 7 pm and 8 am daily. I stopped checking other people’s accounts, stopped obsessing over engagement metrics and follower numbers, and simply started sharing more freely. Knowing that we had other channels driving traffic and sales, I was able to step back without fear.

We had, at last, made Instagram work for us, rather than the other way around. But even then, I knew we hadn’t gone far enough.

For years, our Instagram has been very much me—my inspirations, my travels, my excitement about interiors, small businesses, and things I’ve stumbled across. It’s basically a personal diary. Once in a blue moon, I’d post about what we actually do as a business.

That mix has been lovely for many long-term followers who know us inside out, but for newer people, it’s confusing. Our business has grown dramatically over the years. The last time I checked, our revenue was split roughly 20:20:20:20:20 across embroidery, needlepoint, framing materials, virtual courses/memberships, and sewing supplies. But if you scrolled through our Instagram, would you ever know that? Probably not.

Like many founders, I’ve always assumed that because I live and breathe our products, our audience must instinctively know everything we offer too. But that’s simply not the case. Over the last year, we’ve noticed a growing issue—many people still think we just sell embroidery kits. Only our most dedicated, long-term customers have taken the time to piece together the full picture of what we do. That’s a problem.

On top of that, a significant portion of our Instagram audience has been with us since the very beginning. They’re here for interiors, creativity, and small-business life—but they’re not necessarily our customers. Having a large, engaged audience is wonderful, however whilst follower numbers and likes may boost my ego, they don’t pay salaries. As much as I’ve shied away from ‘selling,’ the reality is that for our business to thrive, we need to make sure we’re reaching the people who do want what we offer. The more the business grows, the more I can pursue products which I know you would love but require heavy upfront investment!

So, it’s time to change that. It’s time to celebrate what we do proudly and unapologetically. We believe our products are beautiful, thoughtful, and truly life-changing. They deserve to take centre stage.

The biggest reason I have fretted over this decision for so long is the risk it poses to our authenticity as a business. The relationships we have built through social media are incredibly important to me, and I never want to take them for granted. I’ve always been the one behind @thefabledthread, having real, one-on-one conversations with real people. That connection is something I deeply value—it’s not just transactional; it’s a genuine relationship.

At the same time, shifting our Instagram to focus more on what we do as a business—rather than just my personal inspirations—means that some people who originally followed for interiors, small business insights, or just me personally might not stay as engaged. And while that’s a little daunting, I have to remind myself that this is a natural part of growth. Our business has evolved, and our social media needs to evolve with it. If in the process that means

So how do we ensure that we don’t just become another robotic account where everything feels predictable and impersonal? That’s where Jen comes in.

We’re not outsourcing. I’m not stepping away entirely. We’re sharing the workload, but keeping it within the family. When Jen first joined the business just under 12 months ago, it was to provide maternity cover for Georgina. But her role has expanded massively—largely because every time I asked her to take on something new, she just nodded and smiled—and then did it brilliantly. Her background is in marketing, and she’s the reason we’ve been able to expand across multiple channels in the last year.

Over the past 12 months, Jen and I have gotten to know each other incredibly well. She is at the core of The Fabled Thread’s day-to-day operations. She’s the one who started our team craft club—not me. She’s also the one responding to customer emails, meaning that if you’ve contacted us in the last year, you’ve probably spoken to Jen. She’s been by my side at markets, at workshops, and at studio days. She doesn’t just understand the business; she understands our customers and truly cares about them.

I would never entrust something as precious as our customer relationships—because at its core, that’s what Instagram is—to just anyone. But with Jen, for the first time ever, I felt like I had someone who could do it better than me. Someone with the distance from our products that I’ll never have as a founder—someone who can promote them confidently without worrying about whether it feels like showing off.

So how do we split things now?

• We create a coordinated content schedule together—one that ties into our newsletters, YouTube channel, product launches, and Studio Membership updates. I still write all the posts.
• Jen manages the day-to-day Instagram interactions—responding to messages and comments during office hours, while I take over on Saturdays.
• Jen creates our Stories based on the posts I write, but we also keep space open for more spontaneous behind-the-scenes content from the studio. This means sharing more of what the team is up to, what’s happening in the studio, and, crucially, more of a focus on what we offer as a business.
• Everything that isn’t directly related to The Fabled Thread—my personal inspirations, random thoughts, and, of course, Roger—now lives on my personal Instagram account, @eppiet. That way, anyone who enjoys that side of things can still follow along, and they can still reach me directly.

Through this process—by keeping it between the two of us, two people who know our customers intimately—we don’t think you’ll lose any of the authenticity we’ve built over the years. If anything, we hope this will allow us to engage with you all even more, while also giving me the space to focus on the parts of the business where I can make the biggest impact.

Over the last 12 months, our team has grown significantly. We’ve gone from having just one full-time team member and two part-time, to three full-time employees and three part-time staff. It might not be an 'Insta-worthy' scale-up story, but in reality, we’ve nearly tripled our team. And with that growth comes the need to let go, to delegate, and to trust others to take on key roles. I’ve had to refocus my energy on where I truly add value while handing over responsibilities to people who can do them even better than me.

I never started The Fabled Thread with the goal of working as many hours as I did in finance. And yet, over the past five years, I’ve worked harder than ever before. Towards the end of 2024, I came dangerously close to complete burnout, and it was a wake-up call. The way I had been working—the level of control I maintained over every detail—wasn’t sustainable. Something had to shift. The reality is, I’ve probably been doing the work of two full-time people for too long.

This transition is a natural stage in any business’s evolution. As we mature, as we grow, we need to refine the way we operate. Fresh energy, fresh perspectives, and people doing jobs they genuinely love create better content, better products, and a stronger business overall.

So, thank you. For being part of this journey. For supporting us as we grow and adapt. For being here as we navigate these changes. I truly believe this shift will bring even more exciting things to The Fabled Thread. And I can’t wait to share it all with you.