Weaving Dreams into Beautiful Business Success
By Ginny Sassaman

When you enter Ann’s Weavery, a visually gorgeous gift shop and weaving studio in Middlesex, among the many enticing textile art pieces you will find are the wildly original mis-matched socks, called “Solmates.”

Ann Lovald, who opened her Weavery shop in 2009, and Marianne Wakerlin, who began her Solmate’s journey in Strafford, Vermont in 2000, share a cordial business relationship—and so much more. Each woman’s story is a blend of passion for her art, determination to lead her own life, hard-earned business acumen, and decades laboring in other careers that ultimately gave each the ability and motivation to build successful Vermont businesses.

For each, the businesses were born at a point in life when it was time to “reinvent” herself, as Ann put it. Living in Vermont was an important factor for both women and each report the legacy of her mother lives on in her business.

Of course, Ann and Marianne are also quite different from one another. Their art is a dramatic contrast.

Weaving is an exacting art that takes careful planning, and patience setting up the loom before beginning to weave – a perfect metaphor for Ann’s clear-eyed business planning. Ann also works with a more muted palette, a definite contrast to Marianne’s socks, which are riotously colorful, even wacky. Marianne’s business decisions haven’t been wacky by a long shot, but she did take a much bigger leap of faith in the beginning. Today, Ann is the sole employee of her shop; Marianne has many employees and supplies shops like Ann’s with wholesale goods.

And that’s part of what makes their shared story compelling: Ann’s and Marianne’s differences beautifully underscore the need for women business owners and artists to stay true to their own values and make their own unique life choices on the path to success.

Ann Lovald: Prudent and Patient

Ann fell in love with weaving at an early age. As a college student studying to be a teacher, she took a weaving elective because she craved a creative outlet. The school offered only an introductory class, but Ann was hooked. “Once you get bit by the weaving bug,” she says, “you really want to weave!”  So she and the instructor worked out a barter system: Ann could use the school’s loom whenever she wanted, in exchange for helping the teacher set up for seminars and demonstrations.

As a teacher herself, Ann always had a loom in her classroom. Every year, the girls and boys in her charge learned how to weave. They built their own inkle belt looms, and as a group created magical, one-of-a-kind wall hangings with ribbons, feathers, and whatever else the children brought in to work with. It was fun, kept Ann in touch with her own art, and honed the teaching skills she now puts to good use in classes at Ann’s Weavery.

After several years, Ann left the classroom. Although she couldn’t know it at the time, it was as if Ann were setting up the loom for her own life—first adding the weaving passion, then the teaching knowledge, followed by business and marketing experience—all creating the framework to make Ann’s Weavery a viable enterprise.

First came a stint as receptionist at a theater in Portsmouth—a job that unexpectedly turned into P.R. Director when the previous director suddenly quit. Ann had to learn on the job, and learn she did—everything from photo shoots and actor interviews to publicizing the play “Dracula” at an area blood drive. She began picking up valuable business knowledge. “If you wanted to keep a job,” Ann observes, “you did whatever was necessary.”

Meanwhile, Ann says, she “talked about weaving all the time.”  She was able to borrow looms on-and-off through the years before finally purchasing her own about 19 years ago. But the weaving was a hobby, not a job.

The jobs continued, with two proving especially valuable in training Ann for her future. One was in the marketing department of a bank in the mid-1980s, when Ann first moved to Vermont. There, she interacted with an ad agency and learned about logos and marketing—exceptional training for an entrepreneur-in-the-making. The bank years were followed by many years in sales in the music industry—traveling “a lot!” to trade shows, stores, museums, gift shows and toy fairs in Las Vegas, Boston, New Orleans. It was interesting and fun—until, one day, while on one of these trips, it just wasn’t fun anymore.

Ann had reached the point in life when all the threads were coming together. “Living in Vermont, people understand about reinventing themselves,” Ann says. “People in other states don’t get it.”  Fortunately, she wasn’t in “other” states, she was in Vermont. And, she had the full support of her husband Dave, who told her, “Ann, you really need your own gig. Think of something. It will work out.”

Ann did think of something. Specifically, she thought, “I weave. I‘m going to sell handcrafted, woven items. I’m going to teach.” 

She knew it was a good concept, because it was multi-level, not just a studio, not just teaching, and not just a gift shop. All of a sudden, she says, all these ideas just started spilling out of her head—including the name, “Ann’s Weavery.” 

Soon, she was on a plane to the American Craft Council wholesale show in Baltimore—and again, her head was just swimming with ideas. “I placed orders right away. I was laughing, practically hyperventilating.”  She enjoyed the moment—then slowed down and approached her tasks more systematically.

In addition to her husband’s solid support, Ann had other resources, including a monetary inheritance—and memories of her mother. “My mom was a shopper. She loved color. It was like my mom was with me.” 

Her “reinvention” came together five-and-half years ago, when Ann opened her first shop in a 650-square foot space in downtown Waterbury. That was a good start, but there wasn’t enough room for Ann’s vision. The move to Middlesex doubled her business. Now, Ann can give demonstrations on the large floor-room right in the middle of the store. She has sufficient space for weaving classes. And she’s expanded her inventory to include a variety of items handcrafted by individuals “who put their energy into” their work—nothing, she emphasizes, that’s cookie cutter! 

Today, Ann is confident about the quality and viability of the store. She enjoys when people tell her how beautiful the store is. The business has always paid for itself; now it’s doing that “and then some.”  Though it hasn’t been easy, she says, “It’s funny what you can find inside yourself. You might doubt yourself, but you just might not be looking in the right place.”

About her business success, Ann observes, “It’s me. The bottom line is me. You have to go in and say you’re going to make this a success, and then you have to figure out how to make it a success.”  Just like setting up the loom.

Of course, Ann’s journey isn’t over. Ironically, her joy in weaving got a little lost in establishing the store. By having the loom at the store, Ann says she can’t really expand her designs because that weaving had to be more focused on business and sales. Recently, though, she’s gotten a loom at home. There, she can be more creative and explore new designs. She thrives on the business—but weaving at home feeds her soul.

Marianne Wakerlin: Passionate and Resourceful

Marianne fell in love with her art at an even earlier age. She was only nine-years-old when her mother taught her how to knit. Fast-forward many years to Illinois, where Marianne one day found herself with “a little bubble” of opportunity. Her sons were grown and finished with college, her parents had passed away.

No one was dependent on her. She was a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) with $150,000 from a divorce settlement and inheritance. The money—more than she’d ever had before—meant she could live the rest of her life in Illinois with a sense of security, as long as she wasn’t too extravagant.

But that was absolutely not how Marianne wanted to live. She was eager to leave the Midwest, move to New England, and reinvent her life. After years of giving her increasingly colorful hand-knit socks as presents to highly appreciative friends and family, Marianne was determined to start her own business manufacturing and selling similar socks.

In 2000, Marianne sold her Illinois townhouse and moved to Vermont. Marianne hadn’t developed her product yet, she didn’t know much about business, and she was moving by herself to a state, where she knew no one. Yet considering her age, Marianne thought this might be her only chance to take such a leap of faith. Determined to think positively, she consciously chose not to look too closely at the many ways she could fail.

“I’m hardy and resourceful,” Marianne says. With her Certified Financial Planner’s degree in hand, she was confident she could always get a job at a local bank if need be. Even if she fell flat on her face, only Marianne would suffer. So, she gave herself three years to make it all work and jumped in with both feet.

Perhaps it’s appropriate the creator of mismatched socks would move forward using both her more logical left brain knowledge and her right brain desire to design the life her heart craved. She named her socks Solmates in honor of her mother, whose name was Sunny. She simultaneously negotiated with mill owners in North Carolina where the socks are made—mill owners who couldn’t understand what this crazy Yankee woman was trying to do—and consulted with her sisters to find just the right home to start her life anew.

“I had three sisters in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and each one wanted me close to her. I had to find my own space,” Marianne recollects. “We came up with a sisters’ rule: each sister had to have her own state.”  Marianne had bicycled in Vermont when she was in college, and loved the Green Mountain State. When she discovered Strafford, she thought, “Why go anywhere else?” Her right-brain self was content.

But her left-brain self needed to develop a plan. Marianne was fully committed. She didn’t look for even a part-time job. She was passionate about her knitting, and confident the public would love her socks. She was willing to take risks. Through the years, as she knit socks as presents, her color palette expanded more and more, with “less safe” color combinations. And she was calculating: she took a look at what other fiber artists were doing in Vermont—quilts, chenille scarves—and knew socks made sense.

Marianne made the decision to have a high-end product because she saw the futility of trying to support herself selling socks for $2.50 a pair. She set the price at $20 a pair, despite the objections of those experienced mill-owners in North Carolina.

The first three years were difficult. She started with wool, but woolen socks didn’t hold up. So she turned to cotton, a compromise for her, but one that allowed for top quality and brighter colors. Within a few years, Marianne and Solmates were wildly successful, fueled in part by a surge of interest after Whoopi Goldberg praised the socks.

Today, Solmates are sold and worn all over the country. You can buy them on Amazon.com. This reporter saw them for sale at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2008; our publisher found them in Florida this year.

Not everyone realizes Marianne’s passion and determination led to creating an environmentally responsible business, as well as a lucrative one. For starters, the socks are made of recycled cotton, a particularly important environmental consideration, given the amount of pesticides used on cotton crops. The company has almost zero waste.

To keep leftover socks out of the landfill, Production Manager Kathy Wohlfort developed a way to make hats and scarves out of the scraps. Then scraps from the production of those products are given to rug-makers. Some of these rugs are for sale at Ann’s Weavery.

Even the lint gets used, by companies that make carpet pads. Marianne says proudly, “Only about one bag of sock scraps gets thrown away each month.”

Solmates is also socially responsible. Marianne has been determined to keep production in the United States, at a family-owned mill. She partners with community organizations, including the Dragon Boat racers who raise money for breast cancer awareness.

Given Solmate’s production volume, the company also ends up with dozens of boxes of usable socks that don’t meet Marianne’s quality wholesale standards. Solmates donates these socks to groups like Meals on Wheels to share with seniors; to Indian reservations; and to children in need, worldwide. Here at home, children of incarcerated parents and children in homeless shelters receive free socks.

Marianne notes that hardly anyone at Solmate works 40 hours a week because she wants everyone—herself included—to take advantage of the opportunities that make Vermont special. For example, Production Manager Wohlfort spends a large part of each summer sighting peregrine falcon and eagles. “We’re all just enjoying the journey,” Marianne says.

Her attitude toward competitors illustrates Marianne’s determination to live a life of integrity. When two other Vermont manufacturers began offering mis-matched socks, Marianne thought it was great. Great that those companies had more fun options and great for her, too, because they helped normalize mis-matched socks. When an out-of-state company more blatantly copied her line, she chose to ignore them. “They had no passion,” she says. “They lacked artistic understanding. I didn’t want to give them any attention, and I figured they’d fail on their own.”  They did.

Marianne says it’s all a question of where you put your energies, what you do with your passion. “I’m not out to be the largest sock company in the world, and I’m not out to be a millionaire,” she says. “I’m just here designing socks and living in Vermont.” 

Ginny Sassaman is a writer, artist, activist, entrepreneur, and mediator. Her most recent venture is opening “The Happiness Paradigm Store and Experience” in Maple Corner, Vermont. www.happinessparadigm@wordpress.com

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