Over the last couple of days, I’v been watching with interest of a situation play out in the knitting community about Those Two Dudes from eCom Crew who shared a podcast about them buying the knitting (dot)com URL for $80 000.

During the podcast, they talked about how they thought knitting was a niche market that they could use to build content from ‘grandmas who knit’. Their aim was to build a 7-figure brand within 12 months making it into an e-commerce brand that was supported by content. The aim to be the number one knitting brand on Amazon.

You can read about their strategy in this blog post which was resurrected in Wayfinder (which they since deleted due to the backlash of the knitting community) called Knitting.com Day 1 – Choosing a Niche and Paying $80 000 for a Domain.

However, this transcript of that podcast through Twitter tells you the enormity of their mistake.

Well, look at how ANGRY knitters became with their nonsense – and quite rightly.

Oh it was a joy to read how angry knitters were – men and women – who were doing this for their livelihood, livid that two men who don’t even knit thought that the hobby could come in and exploit others for their gain. Knitters and designers rallied online to make it known and help each other out.

Their aim was obvious. Cut their costs and maximise short term profits by saturating the site with crap without really understanding the niche industry,

This thread explains the anger.

I for one, will never buy or support anything from this site as I prefer to buy my yarn and accessories from local yarn stores, from the pattern designers themselves or from spinning mills to support the industry and keep it alive.