Crystal Bedney will be inviting folks to her place for some sewing and some community soon. Her business, Serious Fiber, won the Main Street Fort Smith Commerce Collective, a downtown business incubator pitch competition.
"Earlier this month I said that I had won and I was like, are you kidding me? I cried. I cried a lot."
This process is designed to support emerging entrepreneurs while simultaneously activating downtown storefronts in Fort Smith, with support for the winning new business provided by Main Street Fort Smith. Serious Fiber, with a deep connection to knitting and crochet, will soon be at 409 Garrison Ave.
For Crystal Bedney, a foray into retail yarn continues a decades-long journey. When young, she learned to crochet, play the violin and type, but then developed serious tendinitis. To reduce pain in her hands, she switched from crochet to knitting — and then kept knitting. After joining the Navy.
"It was just kind of really — my knitting was kind of my comfort thing, you know. I'd go home from a long, stressful day or whatever, and I would just sit there and knit and it was just very relaxing and just super Zen."
So much Zen that she taught knitting while stationed in Germany.
"And I absolutely loved it. I loved the students. I loved the community that we made there together. And it was just amazing. And I kind of miss that — that community, that camaraderie, getting together and doing something that we all love."
After leaving the Navy, she knew two things: she wanted to keep that sense of community that knitting can provide, and she wanted to be her own boss, creating her own designs of yarn. She began taking her product to vendor shows like the Ozark Fiber Fest in Mountainburg. By last year, she was setting up a booth at as many as 16 shows a year, and she loved the community she was part of.
"What I didn't love was the setup and the tear down. That part is hard."
A contact at the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center told her about the Main Street Fort Smith pitch contest. After being chosen as a finalist, she made her final pitch earlier this month.
"We went over, you know, how I plan to keep things going. I'm going to be doing classes and selling yarn and just having community get-togethers and things like this in order to keep people coming into the store."
So what happens now?
"Now I am working on getting — kind of taking it step by step really. I'm getting fixtures because of course what I have right now is just for my booths, so it's not anything permanent. It's all collapsible and stuff like that. But I'm working on getting fixtures. I am working with four different yarn companies right now to get some inventory besides my own hand-dyed yarn, because that will be a big display as well of my own hand-dyed stuff. And yeah, just kind of filling things up and figuring out what to put in the shop while waiting for the right fixtures and the yarn suppliers' product to arrive."
She does have her own hand-dyed yarn ready to go. That's been the core of her traveling business the past few years. Her web presence highlights her own yarn — multicolored fiber with names like Old Red Barn, Lucky Pot of Gold and Morning Glory Pool. Her creations come from her imagination, her observations of nature and, as she calls it, her recipe book.
"You know, I'm able to reproduce all of that stuff, and I just take my dye and I throw it on the yarn. Or sometimes I'm very strategic about where I throw it. And then I cook it all up. And sometimes I'll come up with a name for a yarn and then I'll make the yarn based off that name. Or sometimes I'll just throw colors on there and then I'll be like, oh, this is what this looks like.
"I don't know if you've looked at Morning Glory Pool — that yarn is actually one of my best sellers when I go to shows. I based that one off of the pool at Yellowstone called Morning Glory Pool, and it is just exactly those colors. The deep blues to the sort of brighter blues and the oranges. It's just amazing. I love Yellowstone."
As the opening for the brick-and-mortar gets closer, she's getting ready to create schedules for classes and craft nights. Crystal says she wants to create a retail space that is as much about fellowship as it is sales.
"I definitely want to bring people together in such a way that we can just all sit and fellowship together and be like-minded together."
Crystal is long on passion and, even if still somewhat surprised she won the Main Street Fort Smith competition, she is eager to get started. There isn't yet a firm opening date for Serious Fiber on Garrison Avenue, but she's eyeing a June launch. She says it's been a whirlwind getting her first brick-and-mortar enterprise ready. She just entered the pitch process three weeks before the deadline, and it's been just over a week since she was notified she won.
Kellams: Do you think you can serve as an inspiration for other people who have this idea but they're thinking, I don't know how to do it, or maybe it's not a good idea?
"I certainly hope so. I am so new to the world of retail business as far as running my own business that I'm still learning. I'm learning a lot. And I hope that if somebody looks at me and says, 'Oh, look what she's learning — I can learn that too.' That would be amazing. I would love to inspire people in that way."
Crystal Bedney is the owner of the soon-to-open Serious Fiber and winner of the Main Street Fort Smith Commerce Collective, a downtown business incubator pitch competition. Speaking by phone Friday, you can learn more about her work and her business at seriousfiber.com.
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