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About Us

About UsWelcome to Wool Warehouse!

Thank you for taking the time to discover who we are, what we do, and why! On this page, you can learn a little more about us, our (relatively short) history, and what we believe makes us slightly different from our competitors.

Independently Different

Wool Warehouse is still owned and run by Holly and Andy, who set up the company. Unlike the two largest online yarn retailers in the UK (you can probably guess who they are!), which are both owned, or part-owned, by private equity or venture capital investment companies, we are very proud to be an independent retailer. While this means we may not have the resources of our larger competitors, we continually reinvest back into the business, and are gradually able to increase the range of yarns we offer, as and when time, funds and space allow.

Everything in One Place

Again, unlike some of our larger competitors who have warehouses and offices in different parts of the country, everything we do is in one building. Everybody who picks up the phone, answers an email, or responds to a message on Facebook, also works in the warehouse picking and packing yarn. This means we’re all intimately acquainted with the products we sell, and there’s a very good chance that the person you speak to on the phone may be the very same person who packs and posts your order!

Hopefully this means that if something goes wrong (which at times it will – we’re human!), we should be able to fix it quickly – rather than just sending an email to a different department in a different part of the country and hoping it gets done!

Our Staff

We are extremely fortunate to have a fantastic team of dedicated people working here, most of whom are passionate knitters and crocheters! While the company is still owned and run by Holly and Andy, it simply would not survive without the hard work of our staff, who all share our commitment to offering the best possible service for our customers. We know we’re not perfect, but we promise to always try our best.

Our Customers

We know that our existence is only possible with the support of our fantastic customers (that’s you!). So we’d like to say a big thank you to all our customers, and hope that we’re able to continue serving you for many years to come. We love hearing from you, so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please do let us know!

Company History

2011 - The idea…

As with many businesses, the idea for Wool Warehouse grew out of a frustration – the frustration of struggling to find all the shades of yarn needed for a particular project. In this particular instance, the yarn in question was Rico Creative Cotton, and the project was one of Lucy’s blankets from her Attic24 blog. Andy may have left it a little late when tasked with buying the 15 shades required in time for it to be a Christmas present for Holly, and the result was three separate orders placed with three different retailers in order to get every shade needed. Surely there had to be a better way – apart from Andy being more organised with Christmas presents…

2012 - In the beginning…

In February 2012, Holly and Andy decided to take the plunge, borrowed some money, and set about trying to open a yarn shop! After six months of frantic work, Wool Warehouse opened its doors in August. With a grand total of seven customers in our first week, we were away… just!

2013 - Changes… 

After a challenging first six months, the business started to grow strongly towards the end of 2013. A lot of effort was put into improving the website, and adding more and more yarns to our range. We soon realised that we weren’t going to be able to fit all the yarn we wanted into the space we had (sound like a familiar problem?), so a cunning plan was formed...

2014 - More space...

In 2014, we had a mezzanine floor installed in the warehouse, which effectively doubled the amount of space we had for yarn!

2015 - Holly, Andy, and alpacas…

In 2015, Holly and Andy found the time to get married, making Wool Warehouse a truly family-owned company! Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reception was held in a barn decorated in pom-poms and crocheted bunting! Some borrowed shelving units full of yarn from the warehouse helped create the ultimate colourful backdrop of nearly 4000 balls of yarn…

In late 2015, we also gained some new recruits – three alpacas. Antonius, Sesame and Titus came from our good friends at Toft Alpacas, who are just 12 miles down the road from us, and well worth a visit. Whether this will lead to some exclusive Wool Warehouse produced alpaca yarn is still open for debate (edit: eventually it did – albeit 4 years later!).

2016 - More space, again...

Surprise, surprise, we’d run out of space again! A cunning plan was formed, which resulted in us building another mezzanine floor – this time in our neighbour’s warehouse (we did ask first!). Now all we had to do was decide what to put in it…

2017 - Fabric and a new recruit!

In March 2017, Holly and Andy welcomed Wool Warehouse’s newest recruit, Baby Betty. It was nearly 18 months before Betty was able to pick and pack her first yarn order! 2017 also saw us start to offer a range of cotton fabrics for patchwork and quilting, which led to Betty acquiring an impressive range of quilted baby blankets!

2019 - Needlecraft

2019 saw the addition of a range of cross-stitch and embroidery supplies. We somehow managed to find a corner of the building to convert into a colourful home for over 6000 needlecraft threads, fabrics, kits and accessories!

2020 - The pandemic hits...

The year everything was turned on its head. As a primarily online business, when the Covid-19 national lockdown hit, the government instructed us to stay open. The dual challenge of keeping our staff safe, while simultaneously trying to serve our customers as best we could, was not easy. We tried our best, and we are extremely grateful for the support from our customers, and the hard work of our staff, for enabling us to keep going through what was a tricky period to say the least!

2022 and beyond…

Although we have grown steadily over the past 10 years, we are still a relatively small team, and still operate from the same premises where it all began. We are proud of who we are and what we do. There are no plans to change how we operate, only to continue gradually improving the range of products we offer, and hopefully continue making our customers happy!

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