Debbie Floyd

Owner, Dances with Wool

As the owner of an independent yarn shop, Floyd balances running a retail operation while maintaining a digital presence.

1. An iPad Pro, plus projection equipment, enables virtual lessons, while the tablet also serves as a point-of-sale terminal. The projection setup (for both in-person and virtual lessons) expands what she’s able to offer her customers.
2. Floyd listed several apps as vying for the #2 spot: QuickBooks Online for finances, Klaviyo for marketing, and Shopify POS system, running on the iPad.
3. Facebook and Instagram are crucial to Dances with Wool’s social media presence.

Masey Kaplan

Executive Director, Loose Ends Project

Kaplan manages donations, donors and staff for this non-profit that connects volunteers with the unfinished craft projects of those who have died.

1. Zeffy is her donation platform of choice because it has zero fees. “Good looks, good functionality” is how she explains it.
2. Little Green Light is donor management software that Kaplan describes as “excellent and affordable”.
3. Gusto is an HR platform that handles payroll, hiring, background checks, and taxes. “It makes all the HR stuff very simple.” For small businesses, tasks like payroll compliance and tax filings can seem overwhelming, so finding a platform dedicated to handling those can be a gamechanger.

Gale Zucker

Commercial Photographer

Zucker’s specialty is photography in the handmade/knitting/wool/maker industry.

1. The focus tracking quality of her Nikon ZF Mirrorless Camera catches the movement of her models and the texture of the materials she photographs. She can’t do her job without an excellent camera, and this one fits the bill.
2. Adobe Lightroom Classic handles Zucker’s workflow. It includes archiving tools as well as photo editing and retouching tools. She can tether her camera to a laptop and shoot straight into Lightroom so clients can see the shots immediately.
3. Zucker calls her iPhone Pro her “office in my hand”. Because she is so often on the go, she uses it to run her business from anywhere with cell phone service or Wi-Fi. It allows her to communicate with clients, work collaboratively, deliver images—and respond to surveys like the one we sent. Zucker uses the camera feature for scouting shots and social media posts, and she even teaches iPhone photo classes.

Kim Werker

Publisher, Nine Ten Publications

Nine Ten is a one-person operation, requiring coordinating with authors, editors, graphic designers, sales teams, distributors, and wholesalers.

1. Gmail is Werker’s primary tool. She admits that this may be “the most boring answer in the world!” Since her job is mostly about communication with a host of collaborators, she uses Gmail in her browser with Boomerang to “throttle” her inbox so she only sees new emails three times a day. She praises Gmail’s ability to handle large attachments and its integration with Google Drive.”Email is, for better or worse, the way work, especially with freelancers and contractors, gets done.”
2. Shopify powers Nine Ten’s online shop, but Werker includes WordPress as equally important. She encourages customers to purchase through local craft shops and bookstores and needs a way to promote those outlets without Shopify’s geo-restricted product listings. To promote pre-orders, she directs to the product in Shopify. Once published, she directs to its landing page on Nine Ten’s WordPress site.
3. Werker has used Apple Pages for editing for almost 20 years. She says she has “never had an issue working with authors or other editors who use [Microsoft] Word.” Because tracking changes is so crucial in Nine Ten’s business and because version control in Google Docs is “a nightmare”, Werker states “old school is the way to go.”

Deborah Fisher

Chief Everything Officer, Fish Museum + Circus

Fisher creates “charming miscellany for the sewing room, maker’s studio, and creative home” and juggles all the moving parts of a small business.

1. Shopify is home to Fish Museum + Circus’ website. Fisher claims that she is not a “big gadget” person, so Shopify handles what she needs it to without friction.
2. Paper & Spark Spreadsheets, including the Shopify Seller Spreadsheet, keeps track of the financial record-keeping in a low-tech way.
3. Fisher listed several items that came in at #3: AirTable for tracking patterns, stickers and notecards; iPad with Procreate; and a lightbox for photography.

Lisa Woolfork

Founder, Black Women Stitch

Host, Stitch Please Podcast

Woolfork’s work is at the intersection of community building, content creation and sewing education. Her main need is for communication tools.

1. Woolfork uses the cloud-based Riverside audio and video recording platform to record the podcast. It allows producers, hosts and guests to connect in real time anywhere in the world, and it includes livestreaming.
2. Loom is a cloud-based screen recording platform. According to Woolfork, “Have you ever had a computer error that you couldn’t fix? I have! I use Loom to record how I encounter the error and send that video to an expert who can diagnose the problem.” She also uses it to create video demos to share with her community.
3. Dualshot iPhone app allows creators to record horizontal and vertical video at the same time, saving them separately in the camera roll. This is a huge timesaver over having to manually reframe content. “I’m very excited about this!” she says.

Anne Weil

Craft Store Owner, Flax & Twine

Weil sells yarn, kits, and video courses, which means her tech needs span e-commerce and course delivery as well as in-house design and production.

1. Shopify is “where I sell everything. I literally could not make any money without it.” That says it all.
2. Weil is moving her course content to Tevello, which allows instructors to keep both videos and customers on the Shopify platform. Weil says, ” It also has community capability at a much lower cost than other options!”
3. Adobe InDesign is the tool of choice for all of Flax & Twine’s in-house design, including patterns, kit labels, fiber labels, and kit inserts.

Weil added that their inventory management system is “absolutely critical” for knowing what to order, although she was reluctant to recommend the one they currently use.

Amy Smart

Quilt and Fabric Designer, Diary of a Quilter

Smart started her business as a blogger in 2008, and everything she does online is designed to funnel people back to the website.

1. A WordPress website is “my most valuable tool and asset”. Google is her largest traffic source, and the site generates consistent revenue through advertising.
2. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) handles weekly newsletters, quilt-alongs, and sales promotions. Having spent years building and nurturing her email list, Smart boasts 63,000 subscribers with a 68% open rate. “I get exponentially more views and responses from this list than from any social media,” she says.
3. Smart relies on Adobe Creative Suite—specifically Illustrator for writing and formatting quilt patterns and Lightroom for editing photos. She collaborates with a formatter using Illustrator, which allows them to work on patterns together in real time. Lightroom’s pre-sets and batch-editing capabilities put good photography within reach without being a time sink.

Laura Bellows

Founder, JUL Designs

Bellows designs and produces handcrafted metal buttons, clasps, and jewelry findings, working in close collaboration with Agus Astradhi, who is based in Bali, Indonesia. Her top picks focus on collaboration tools that can work across a 12-hour time difference.

1. The two collaborators use Signal for everything—text, voice, and video. Laura says, “When Agus and I first started working together almost 20 years ago, we didn’t have all these video technologies.” Every process took days or weeks over email, but now they can resolve problems in real time over a single video call. Signal works anywhere in the world with a cell or Wi-Fi connection.
2. Adobe Photoshop comes in at #2, but not in the way you might expect. When Bellows finds a reference image like an antique tile, animal carving, or archival photograph, they work together in Photoshop to manipulate the image, refining shapes and dimensions until each element is perfect and is at the actual specified size. “I can print it out and know that that button is exactly 1½ inches.” It can then be sent to the artisan to start the production process.
3. For marketing and education, Bellows says that smartphone videos are key to showing how their products work, how they can be used, and how other makers are incorporating them into their projects. It is less about a specific app and more about a shift in how craft businesses communicate with their customers.

Barbie McCormick

Dressmaker and Custom Sewing, SewGood

Proudly claiming to be “super low-tech”, McCormick relies on the basics to run her custom sewing business.

1. MCormick uses a basic laptop and printer for email, writing articles, and preparing supply lists and class outlines for her couture classes. Because the more intense classes have 20+ pages of instruction, having good basic tools is essential.
2. Her portable Bluetooth keyboard allows her to respond to texts and emails quickly on the go, much more easily than thumb-typing directly into a phone. “It’s like having a tiny laptop with me.”
3. Canva (free version), which she leverages by using templates for social media posts, giving her a streamlined look for her posts without spending a lot of time on them.

McCormick weighs in on the advantages of going low-tech:

Other than my iPhone, laptop, and little keyboard, that’s really it. All of my professional sewing-related machinery is non-computerized-—just turn on and go. Even my calendar is hand-written paper. Some of the reason is expense— once I buy a sewing machine, I can expect it to last 30+ years. Tech tools last five at best. And learning curves— I can learn a computer program, but I get frustrated having to re-learn once it updates overnight and changes things. In sewing, pattern drafting (which I do by hand), ALL of the information that I learn is ALWAYS relevant. Old-school sewing techniques are often the best!

Across all those surveyed, Shopify was mentioned the most, as the way to get product in front of shoppers and to handle sales and receipts. The Adobe products were also a popular response, with the specific tool (Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop, InDesign) dependent on the use case. And video—whether for recording podcasts, collaborating with a team, or educating customers—came up in nearly every conversation in one form or another.

Almost all of the interviewees mentioned that choosing a top three can be hard, as many professionals rely on multiple tools on a daily basis. The most important tools will vary based on the businesses’ priorities, number of team members, and willingness to adapt to new technology, including—as Barbie McCormick does—not trying to keep up with each new wave of technology.

Do you have a must-have tech tool that isn’t mentioned above? Let us know in the comments, and tell us how you use it and why it’s important to you.

Edie Eckman

contributor