Announcing the DMFibers Teacher Program!

September 30, 2017

Part of our goal here at DMFibers is to help grow the spinning community at large. We can think of no better way to do that than to encourage more excellent spinning classes to create more enthusiastic new spinners. To that end, we are so pleased to announce our new Teacher Program.

The DMFibers Teacher Program is designed to save teachers time and money as well as help stores profit from bringing in a guest teacher both at the time of the workshop and afterwards.

Let's talk about the teacher side of things first:

We have spoken to many spinning teachers, and we heard a lot of them wishing they could more easily get the fiber for their classes already packaged in the quantities they need and at a fair price. We are pleased to announce that we will be offering a subset of our product line in 2oz put ups just for teachers. Additionally, we would be happy to pre-assemble class kits at no extra charge - for example, if you tell us that each of 10 students needs 2oz Dyed Corriedale, 2oz Merino/Silk, and 2oz Coopworth, we will send 10 bags, each with 3 labelled baggies inside, all ready to hand out in class. For teachers who travel, we are offering to send your class supplies ahead to your destination, just provide us with the address! If you teach the same class regularly, we can keep that supply list on file so your prep can be as simple as telling us that you have a "Beginning Spindling" coming up with 5 students registered.

To participate in the Teacher Program, we require two things:

Some documentation that you are a spinning teachers, usually a print or online class listing.
An agreement that you will charge your students the full retail price for their materials

This second point is important because students who take classes, particularly intro-level classes, with severely discounted materials fees are often surprised when they see the retail price tag on those same supplies. This is turn leads them to feel either negatively about the store (they must be overpricing things!) or negatively about their new skill (I thought this was going to be more affordable!). Offering supplies to students at or only slightly above wholesale prices is damaging to the entire industry.

For Stores:

We understand that bringing in a guest teacher can represent a major investment. We want to help you get the most out of that investment by making sure that excitement about spinning lingers in your store. We will work with you and the teacher to put together what we call "The Afterparty". This is a bundle of fiber that includes the same selection that the teacher used in class. Students who have just had fun spinning a particular fiber are sure to want more, and when you have it on the shelves for them it's a huge incentive to come back again and again. All fibers in our teacher packs come with the same visually striking label as fiber bagged for retail. Your customers will recognize it! Consider hosting an actual "Afterparty" event for students to come back, share their work with each other, shop, and chat.

When a store chooses to order an Afterparty, we will give the teacher a store credit to DMFibers for 10% of the Afterparty total to be put towards future purchases. We believe the instructors are directly driving these sales, and they deserve compensation for that!

The Fibers:

There will be no choice of colors for teacher packs, though you may make requests - for example, two contrasting shades of Dyed Corriedale. We will consider expanding the fibers offered for teacher packs based on demand, so if there's something you'd like to use in your teaching, please contact us!

Fibers currently available for Teacher Packs (2oz bags):
22 Micron Merino Top
Coopworth Sliver
Romney Sliver
Dyed Corriedale Top
Merino/Silk Top
BFL Top
Northern Lights Top

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