Craft Focus - October/November 2020 (Issue 81)

81 PROFILE Natural selection Britta Kremke owner of Selected Yarns tells us all about how and when the company started and the range of brands they stock Tell us a bit about Selected Yarns. When did you set up the business? The business started as a small B2C online shop (www.schmeichelgarne.de) in 2009, founded by my husband Carsten and myself. At that time, we had a marketing agency specialised in programming online stores and thought it would be a good idea to have a shop of our own. In 2014, we started our B2B business by importing and distributing overseas brands in Continental Europe as Selected Yarns. In 2016, we developed our own brand Kremke Soul Wool. We’re based in northern Germany, a small village with 200 inhabitants, right between Hamburg and Berlin.  What brands do you stock? Today we stock (apart from Kremke Soul Wool), Manos del Uruguay, Cowgirl Blues, Shibui, Cocoknits, Karen Noe, Erika Knight, ADDI Needles and last but not least, BC Garn. BC Garn was founded in the ’90s by Bo and Marianna Carstensen in Denmark and we have distributed the brand since 2016. In 2018, Bo and Marianna asked us whether we’d want to take over their business as they wanted to retire. We felt honoured that they’d considered us the ‘new parents’ of their baby and were happy to take over the line with some 30 different yarns. The focus of this line clearly lies on completely natural fibres, mostly organic and whenever possible with GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certificate. From our point of view, the GOTS label is the most comprehensive certificate in the textile industry. Unlike ÖkoTex, which only certifies that no harmful substances are used, GOTS checks each production process: From animal welfare, the use of pesticides on the fields, the environmental impact of the spinning and dying process, the compliance of the dye stuff to social responsibility including checking the fair wages of all people participating in the process. That goes so far that the inspector checks if our employees in the warehouse wear safety shoes and are trained in first aid and know where the fire extinguisher is.  More and more consumers are asking for sustainable and animal-friendly fibres. We strongly believe that this certificate is a reliable indicator for sustainable production and that’s why we try to have all new yarn developments being GOTS certified or at least produced with as much GOTS certified fibre as possible. For example, our latest yarn development, Summer in Kashmir, is a 90 per cent GOTS wool blended with 10 per cent cashmere.  How can interested stockists contact you? Stockists who are interested in our yarns can get in touch with us on www.selected- yarns .com, ou r B2B platform and webshop.  +49 (0) 38722 227 22 order@schmeichel-partner.de https://www.selected-yarns.com/