77 BUSINESS Licensing the idea to an established craft company made far more sense, even if it meant earning less in theory. We wanted someone else to do the heavy lifting. We took advice from dozens of relevant YouTube videos. Ade, who had never made a sell sheet in his life, taught himself how to create one. We staged photos of me using the YarnArm on train journeys. We researched knitting and crochet brands and began emailing them – only to be met with complete silence. Emails disappeared into the void and LinkedIn approaches went unanswered. It would have been very easy to give up at that point. But in September 2024 we went to a large knitting and crochet show at Newbury Racecourse, and everything changed. I wore the YarnArm as we walked around. People stopped, pointing at it and nudging their friends. Over and over, we heard: “That’s brilliant — where can I get one?” Commuters told us they’d needed this for years and wheelchair users told us it would be transformative for them. Encouraged, Ade redesigned the YarnArm to make it cheaper and easier to mass-produce. He simplified the components so the device folded flat, assembled instantly, and could be manufactured via injection moulding or industrial 3D printing. By late 2024 we eventually managed to find a manufacturer, the wonderful Micky in Taiwan. We paid for moulds to be made in his factory and he invited us to the huge h+h Cologne trade show in March 2025, where we met him and saw the first injection-moulded samples he’d made: bright pink, robust, and deeply satisfying to use. Not really knowing what we were doing, we nonetheless touted them around the fair, garnering interest from three or four major companies, which was very exciting. Eventually, after many conversations, Zoom calls and long waits, we licensed the YarnArm to one of these companies, addi, a German family business founded in 1835. We’d been fortunate enough to meet the owner at h+h, and from the start they were our favoured option as licensors – they had understood the product immediately. Looking back, what surprises us most isn’t that the (now-named) addiYarnArm exists, but that we saw it through. Neither of us is naturally entrepreneurial. I’m used to solitary work, tapping away at a keyboard. Ade is used to practical problem-solving and getting on with the job, not corporate ambiguity. We learned, sometimes painfully, about patents, manufacturing tolerances, trade shows, pricing and the peculiar agony of waiting for emails. Age helped more than it hindered, because we weren’t chasing a dream of becoming billionaires, and we were far from reckless. We asked questions and trusted our instincts, very prepared to walk away if something didn’t feel right. The addiYarnArm launched in March at, appropriately h+h 2026, seeing our return to Cologne. Initial reaction has been mostly extremely positive and addi are very happy with initial order numbers in Europe and the USA. Whether it becomes a runaway success or a modest footnote, we don’t yet know – it’s still early days. But we do know this: it is never too late to have a good idea, to take it seriously and to follow it further than you ever expected. It’s been genuinely thrilling so far! The addiYarnArm is available from jamesmcintosh.co.uk: https://surl.li/ajmsct
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