WEBS Story
WEBS - America's Yarn Store is located in the picturesque Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. WEBS started as a family-owned business and has been the destination for knitters, crocheters, weavers, and spinners for 50 years.
1974
WEBS was founded by Barbara Elkins and her then business partner Donna Muller and was solely focused on teaching weaving and renting looms. The business was initially located in Barbara's basement. After eight years, Donna sold her share of the business to Barbara.
1984
WEBS moved out of the Elkins' basement and to its first storefront on Main Street in Amherst.
1987
WEBS moved again to a larger Victorian House on Kellogg Ave in Amherst and Barbara added knitting yarns, WEBS's permanent weaving lines, and hired her husband Art full-time into the business upon his retirement as a professor at UMASS. Together they discovered mail order and sent out the company's first set of "samples". Customer orders soon followed.
When they purchased the Kellogg Ave location, they were convinced it was big enough to sustain the business for 10 years of growth, but it barely made it three years before they were once again looking for a larger space.
1992
WEBS moved to Northampton, where the business is still located. After exhausting every possibility in Amherst and the surrounding towns, Barbara and Art decided to give Northampton a try.
2001
WEBS first catalog was mailed, featuring mostly looms and other weaving tools. Prior to this, WEBS mailed black and white text mailers.
2002
Art and Barbara began thinking about retirement in the late ‘90s and after much arm-twisting from Art, Barbara, and Kathy, Steve was convinced that it was time for he and Kathy to take the leap. In the spring of 2002, Steve and Kathy took over day to day operations of WEBS.
2003
WEBS moved into the world of online retail with their first ecommerce site at yarn.com.
2004
The Northampton store was growing and needed a little more space. The store was renovated to expand the non-warehouse shopping area, adding 2,500 square feet to the main part of the store.
WEBS added regular catalog mailings to the marketing rotation, moving away from black and white printed yarn descriptions with small samples of the listed yarns. The catalog featured yarns for both weaving and knitting/crochet, as well as project ideas.
2005
With the introduction of Valley Yarns Berkshire and Valley Yarns Berkshire Bulky, the Valley Yarns line for knitting/crochet was cemented into the WEBS world. Before this, many of the Valley Yarns lines were just for weaving, or were large closeout lots that were relabeled and renamed.
2006
Our first Valley Yarns catalog was introduced and featured our entire Valley Yarns knitting/crochet yarn line along with patterns for inspiration.
2007
To better serve our customers and their preferred craft, we separated the weaving and knitting/crochet catalogs and introduced our first weaving-only catalog.
2008
WEBS again outgrew its space, so the building saw another renovation. In addition to added offices, existing rooms were renovated and reorganized into a single stockroom, an additional warehouse area was created, and shipping was moved to a much larger area.
2012
Yet again, WEBS outgrew the predicted space and our Easthampton warehouse was purchased. This warehouse now houses all of our yarns, Customer Service, and our Shipping Departments.
2018
Steve and Kathy were approached by Stacy Charles and made the decision to purchase Tahki Stacy Charles and String Yarns. In addition to the yarn labels, String Yarns in New York City is now part of the WEBS family.
2020
WEBS is acquired by LoveCrafts, creating a partnership with two companies who share the same values that have made each company a success in their own right—a love of crafting and makers, a desire to source quality products and bring them to makers at great prices, and growing a thoughtful and kind community of yarn enthusiasts across the globe.