gosadi is new a platform that allows users to push knitting and crochet patterns out to multiple selling channels from one hub.
gosadi, a new platform for knit and crochet designers, was born on a 90-minute car ride. Michele Costa, a crochet designer, blogger, and events coordinator, was driving with Hilary Cerbin, a knitwear designer and yarn shop owner. “It started out as a total bitchfest,” Costa says. The tedium of uploading patterns to different channels annoyed Costa and felt like part of the “endless backend work” that came with being a designer. There was also the fact that on Etsy, Costa was unable to collect emails from her customers.
“Within fifteen minutes,” Costa recounts, “we were like, ‘how do we solve this?’”
The solution became gosadi (the company name is not capitalized), a platform that promises to push knitting and crochet patterns out to multiple selling channels from one hub.
Currently, the platform is connected to both Ravelry and Etsy. It has several handy features, most notably its proprietary technology, SMARTS. SMARTS is an improved AI (meaning the AI can learn) and algorithm that allows users to translate patterns, including features that optimize SEO, from one selling channel into another. This means that a designer can import her patterns from Ravelry and send them to Etsy with a few clicks. SMARTS can also generate tags for Etsy.
Michele Costa and Hilary Cerbin founded gosadi to improve the tedium of uploading patterns to different channels .
“That’s amazing,” says Valerie Moreno, designer at the Knitting Fairy Godmother who plans to try out the platform. Moreno currently sells her patterns on her website and on Ravelry. She’s considered putting them on Etsy, but the time it would take to learn to use the marketplace is a barrier.
Others agree. “I don’t want to learn Etsy,” says Julie DesJardins, crochet designer at Accrochet and alpha user of gosadi. “You know what I mean?”
The company has been building the platform since 2022. They have worked closely with a handful of designers from the beginning—alpha users—to make gosadi as designer-friendly as possible.
Alpha users have free lifetime access to the platform; some also went on a trip to Rhinebeck paid for by the company. Beta testers joined later and receive free use of the public-facing part of the platform while it is in testing.
Patty Lyons, a knitwear designer and teacher, is a beta tester for gosadi who plans to pay for a subscription. She says the platform has become incredibly valuable to her. Before gosadi, Lyons says, she felt like “[her] life was maintaining” the approximately 150 patterns she has published on Ravelry, LoveCrafts, and her own website. Lyons typically launches her patterns as knit-a-longs (KALs) by including details about the KAL in the description of the pattern and updating the pattern regularly for a period of time after the launch. Having to do this on each platform was a huge time suck, and it was easy to overlook something.
“There’s absolutely nothing else like this,” Lyons says of gosadi.
Subscription plans to the gosadi platform range from $5/month or $55/year for one selling channel, to $12.99/month or $142/year for four channels, to $24.99/month or $275/year for unlimited channels. The highest tier is comparable to the cost of maintaining a website. As mentioned above, gosadi is currently connected to two channels, Ravelry and Etsy. There are plans to integrate with LoveCrafts and the Meta platforms next: Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
Some are skeptical that gosadi is worth the investment. Jen Parroccini of One Wild Designs was a beta tester of an early version of the platform who excused herself from the process. She points out, “You’re investing in someone else’s platform.”
“Why would I be paying someone to give them traffic?” she asks.
But Natalie Thomas, crochet designer at Detroit Knots and an alpha tester, says, “It’s perfect for me.” Thomas has a website, but she doesn’t use it very much. Instead, she has a designer landing page on gosadi’s platform, which showcases her designs and provides outgoing links to her social media channels. Designer landing pages are available for an add-on of $5/month at the lower two subscription tiers and are included in the top tier.
The company launched their “Early Access” program in January of this year. The public launch is planned for January 2025 at Vogue Knitting Live.
Costa, the co-founder, points out that designers can include links to their own newsletters, as well as affiliate links, on their designer landing pages.
“I want gosadi to solve pain points,” she says.
These are the same pain points she experienced as a designer, the ones she complained about on the car ride with co-founder Cerbin.
Designer landing pages on gosadi’s platform showcase designs and provide outgoing links to social media and channels.
Financially, the company is in a start-up phase. It is funded by an investor who is also a partner in the company; Costa declined to disclose the investor’s name or the amount of the investment. Eventually, the business model will rely on both designer subscriptions and ads, which will run on pattern listing pages. Currently, these ad spots are filled by affiliate links.
There are plans to incorporate yarn shops into the platform as well. For a nominal fee, yarn shops will be able to register on the site. This will allow them to connect with designers who want to work with a local yarn shop—for example, by running a knit or crochet-a-long. There will also be an integration with Google maps where users will get a pop-up notifying them that the yarn required by the pattern is available at a registered yarn shop nearby.
Costa also sees possibilities for scaling the platform to other crafts, including sewing and quilting patterns. “Any digital product could be managed with gosadi,” she says.
The company launched their “Early Access” program in January at Vogue Knitting Live. Designers are invited to sign up via a simple application process and try out the platform for free for six months. A launch to the general public is planned for January 2025 at Vogue Knitting Live.
Alicia de los Reyes
contributor
Alicia de los Reyes is a freelance writer who loves to make things. She has her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire and her work has appeared in the Billfold, the Archipelago, Sojourners Magazine, and others. See more of her work at aliciadelosreyes.com.
