15 Years of fibre space: Danielle Romanetti Shares Her Top Moments
“It’s not the business I thought I was opening…it’s about three times the size of the business I started. And I never thought I’d own a building,” said Danielle Romanetti, when I stopped by earlier this summer.
Fibre space kicked off their 15th year in July and will celebrate it for the entire year. “We’re rolling out a lot of custom programs, project bags, enamel bags, special yarns…one of a kind. And a big birthday sale with our ‘Space Commander Group,’ our top customers. I have a really good team right now and I’m letting my staff run things and they’re crushing it. Though I still make most of the buying decisions.”
A few women were gathered at a table outside her office, and she shared, “Classes are the backbone of the business and drive community building. The bread and butter is yarn; standard middle gauge is our biggest selling category, the good workhorse yarns. Our biggest seller is called Spincycle, from a women-owned company and mill on the West coast in Washington State. We sell it online but each skein is so unique that we are willing to go back and forth with customers to make sure they’re happy with their selection.”
As she spun around in her office chair to give me her full attention (or as much as she could), I asked Danielle to share her top fibre space moments. “Aaaahhh,” she said as she began scrolling through her phone for pictures and reminiscing. It wasn’t easy to nail down every exact detail…but it went something like this:
MSNBC Appearance. She says it was wild, and a huge win shepherded by PR pro, Maurisa Potts. “MSNBC had a series on Sundays, a deep dive into business ownership and their unique stories. At the time, I refused to sell online…this was 2017,” she said with a crooked smile. “We have a unique business model with in-store sales, and I was not finding value in selling online. In-store, there’s community and texture and color couldn’t be communicated online. I was quoted in that TV clip as saying, ‘We know things are really bad if we have to sell online.’”
In 2020, they had to put it online. “Covid confirmed it – fulfillment is a very small percentage of our business. It still exists to return the favor to those customers that supported us doing the pandemic, and to those that lived here and moved away. It’s a big undertaking for our business and we only sell limited products on the web store. Knitting needles are our backbone and talking to our staff about the project and the experience. It’s hard to support their project when they mess it up and they live in Kansas…and it’s very challenging to support an online knitting community.”
Launching Black Friday/Plaid Friday in Old Town. “I had always partnered with others. This was the first time I took the lead in organizing so many other businesses. It was the start of me becoming part of the Boutique District community with Red Barn and Bellacara, the leaders in retail. It was amazing when we started it. Read the history here.
Receiving Business of the Year from The Chamber ALX in 2010. “I thought I didn’t have to dress up and about five minutes into his speech, I realized Mike Anderson was talking about fibre space! In 2021, we also won Small Business of the Year.”
The government shutdown of 2013. “We offered free knitting classes to furloughed government employees. We had 50 people show up every day and I had my baby daughter strapped to me. Everyone introduced themselves and it was terrifying to hear from all the people not working and what their jobs were. And we still have so many customers who learned how to knit from the shutdown. We’ve had people learn and then come back to teach during other shutdowns.”
Buying the building at 1319 Prince Street. “It was a huge milestone. We closed on July 5, 2017, and moved in at the end of September. It was a very quick and very significant renovation. We had the windows replaced, painted the brick…received approval for the sand mixture to repaint the brick…to match the mortar on the building. Ian McGrath helped me with the building. I never thought ‘let me create this iconic building with murals, and sheep and a park.’”
As for the park, it was also something she didn’t envision. “Christ House is across the street and we had this somewhat abandoned space. I reached out to Victoria Vergason, who owned the vintage shop, The Hour, and she introduced me to her husband, Michael. A world-famous landscape architect, Michael Vergason, offered to help me! He showed up with this plan and handed me the direction. We adopted the park from the city and got permission for the plants. The iconic sheep were his idea…and he picked out which trees to plant. I didn’t envision any of this. It was the creation of people in my orbit who were so willing to offer advice and their opinion –it’s what’s so cool about this city.”
Being recognized as a Living Wage Employer in 2018. “We were recognized by the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy and Virginia Theological Seminary for our living wage effort for Alexandria.”
VP Kamala’s Harris visit to fibre space in 2021. “It was a very big deal, and it happened because of my involvement with local politics. There’s been a huge payment for this business…all the free labor, city committees, trying to change parking policies…all that led to her coming here. Someone in the office of John Chapman got the call that VP Harris wanted to visit a women-owned business impacted by Covid. He gave them my name. It wasn’t random. I got the call on Friday and she was here the following Wednesday. Because it was a planned visit, The White House event team was here every day with the Secret Service. The Fire Marshall was here to check the building for safety for her team and removed fixtures to make space for the press. In the behind-the-scenes images, the Press Corps was smooshed up behind my cash wrap…and my daughter, who was seven was smooshed in there, too, because I wanted her to see. The owner’s daughter was the star of the show. She sat there watching it all as chill as can be.”
After VP Harris gave her remarks, it was over, and the press left. “Then it was just me, my daughter and staff, and the Vice President in my empty store. She came over and said, ‘So tell me about this business’. We had ten to fifteen minutes alone and we also chatted about her stepdaughter who is a knitter.” A couple of weeks after the event, Danielle was on a Zoom call with other business owners from all over the country. “I was one of the smaller business owners. Her team had kept in contact with me as they rolled out the relief bill.”
I asked her about the ‘Crochet Czar’ pin. “So I woke up the next morning (after VP Harris’ visit), and I had already been fielding all the comments, and deleting any vitriol, because I didn’t want my staff to view and read that nonsense. Then I got a text message, “Tucker is mocking your business.” And I went to watch the clip, and he said, ‘Ugh, of course, it’s a woman-owned business…a yarn store.’ He cast me aside as insignificant and not mattering. That’s the feeling so many women business owners have felt when they walk into a bank…talk to a real estate agent, or an older landlord. You encounter this the entire time. Female business owners are treated in a hobby business with a pat, pat on the head. There’s an assumption that husbands are funding it and it’s something they set up to keep us busy. WRONG. Women business owners run the community. If there was an event that got created, planned and executed…if there is a major push in a marketing business…a banner got updated, it was a woman who was behind it – and probably doing it for free!”
She continued, “The fact that we call women’s art – craft, instead of art speaks to this assumption. Literally the next day after Tucker coined VP Harris, “The Crochet Czar,” we said, ‘Let’s do something hilarious to commemorate her visit…make it funny, sell it for charity. We asked ALIVE! House if they were comfortable with it and they agreed.”
They didn’t sell all the pins in 2021. “And then in July, I saw my staff packing these pins. They sold out within ten minutes after a post went viral. We added two more batches which also quickly sold out. But we’re not in the fulfillment business, and the time it takes my staff to pack and ship…it’s just not feasible. In all, 460 pins were sold, and $3,000 went to ALIVE!” The Crochet Czar rises again.
She says there are many perks to owning a business, “because this is a lot of work for not a lot payoff if you're not getting the benefit of working with other women. I’ll give an example: Gerry from Petal’s Edge, a knitter, reached out to me about flowering the sheep outside and asked me, ‘Would you ever consider doing this?’ She sent me the concepts, and I got busy…and then remembered that this ‘kidnapping’ was supposed to happen. I was thinking, ‘Crap, did she get them?’ And I happen to look down from my office window and there’s a camera stand with a phone in the park…and Ger’s crew dressed in pink and red bandanas. They’re filming the kidnapping of the sheep. I ran out and gave her a huge hug. She knew what needed to get done and she did it. That’s why we need to focus on partnering with business owners who get it. It was so genuine and raw and authentic – and spontaneous. She beflowered my sheep…and people came and took pics all week.”
When I ask her about the next 15 years, Danielle’s eyes pop open, ”I hadn’t thought about that…another 15 years?” I suggest maybe handing off the business to her daughter (she’s 11 now). She ponders it…“Maybe? Maddie does have a desire to start something.”
For the near future, she’s looking forward to “catching up on sleep and laying on a beach, climbing a rock cliff…saving my pasty, pale skin…and seeing where it goes next. Fifteen years is a major milestone, it’s not predictable, you don’t have as much control over its path as you wish you did. The second half of this business survived by letting it go down the path it needed to go down.”
We look forward to celebrating fibre space’s next milestone: 20 years!
SEE ALSO: That Time I Was Mocked On National Television And How It Became A Fundraiser For An Amazing Cause
