UNWOUND: ARTISAN YARN SHOP- A CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY
Unwound: Artisan Yarn Shop is a bright, open, and comfortable yarn shop with a focus on local, regional, and small scale yarn and fiber. With a lounge that is always open to crafters (pre-covid) and many unique products for sale, it's easy to create something you'll fall in love with!
My name is Kait Holton and I have been the owner and operator of Unwound: Artisan Yarn Shop since we opened in August 2017, located at 413 Jay Street. My husband and I moved to La Crosse from central Illinois in 2015 and I'm so glad we did!
I think everyone dreams of owning their own business some day. For me, a yarn shop was the perfect way to combine my love for yarn, knitting, and creating with my love of planning and spreadsheets. Plus, La Crosse's downtown was the perfect location with its vibrant community, shop-small attitude, and all kinds of seasonal events.
In late 2016 I started putting together my business plan and sought the help of the SBDC on UWL's campus. They were incredibly helpful and I highly recommend any hopeful start-up takes advantage of their services. They helped me really refine my business plan, helped me do market research, and put me in touch with experts in a wide variety of fields so that I could ask questions and get advice.
The SBDC also put me in touch with an organization called WWBIC - Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation - which is a business lender with a focus on women and minority entrepreneurs. WWBIC provides each of its clients with an advisor who stays with you throughout your first years of business. This service was incredibly helpful as my advisor was able to either answer any questions I had or put me in touch with someone who could. No matter how prepared you are you start a business, there are a myriad of things that pop up unexpectedly and it was because of my advisor at WWBIC that I felt capable of handling those things.
With a variety of restaurants, coffee shops, and other cute shops to visit, there's so many things to love about this beautiful city. My favorite place to go is Pearl Street Books! La Crosse's downtown is so much more vibrant and diverse than many bigger cities'. We're lucky to have such a gem. -Kait Holton, Owner of Unwound: Artisan Yarn Shop
Things have gotten a bit weird for all of us during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hours have been changing based on information from the La Crosse County Health Department. We also provide customers hand sanitizer, require everyone to wear masks inside the store, and we've moved all of our social events online.
The community has been incredibly supportive during this upheaval and we just want to say a huge thank you to those of you who are being patient and understanding with us, and all local businesses. For a lot of small shops, the team is very small and if one of us gets sick, it would mean shutting down operations for a month. We really appreciate that our customers are helping us roll with these punches and hopefully come out the other side.
Please follow us on social media or subscribe to our email newsletters to stay up-to-date with future changes. But we're open online any time and would LOVE to help if you have a question or want a picture of two colors together to see if you like them. We know shopping for yarn online isn't the same as seeing it in person, so we're here to make it as close to normal as possible!
Give us a call at 608-519-3722 or email us at contact@unwoundshop.com with any questions you may have. Appointments to shop in-store or pickup a curbside order can be made here. When I'm not working at the shop, I love to go hiking up on the bluffs, walk around downtown, ride bikes on the scenic trails, and get ice cream at The Pearl Ice Cream Parlor.
-Kait Holton
Founder and Owner of Unwound: Artisan Yarn Shop
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