A 78-year-old Hudson Valley weaver: shawls $79 instead of $260.

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After 20 Years Of Being Scammed By Marketing Agencies, I'm Asking You Directly: Buy My Last 800 Shawls Before I Lose The Workshop
After two decades and forty-two thousand dollars lost to marketing agencies that promised growth and delivered nothing, I'm reaching out directly to people who still care about handwoven wool. This is the only way left.
A personal note from Erik Halvorsen, weaver
I started weaving in this Hudson Valley workshop in 1974 , the year my father handed me the loom. He'd taken it over from my grandfather, who'd carried a single shuttle off a boat from Bergen in 1947. For thirty years it was just me, the loom, and the customers who found us by word of mouth.
Then in 2005, a Manhattan consultant told me I needed to grow. I hired D.M. Digital in 2007 — they took eleven thousand dollars and ghosted within four months. R.S. Reach in 2014 promised SEO results, drained nineteen thousand over a year, delivered nothing. B.C. Boost in 2022 ran Facebook ads that burned through twelve thousand dollars and produced eleven sales.
After twenty years I'm forty-two thousand dollars in debt . The bank calls every Tuesday. My wool supplier in Maine needs payment by June. I'm seventy-eight years old and working fourteen-hour days between the loom, the supplier calls, and the packing bench just to keep the lights on.
So I'm doing the only thing I have left. I'm reaching out to people who still care about handwoven wool. If I can sell these last 800 shawls direct , I clear the suppliers, chip the bank loan in half, and the workshop my grandfather built survives another year.
How My Grandfather Built This Loom In 1947
My grandfather Lars taught me to read a warp before I could read a book. I was seven, sitting at his feet in this same workshop, watching the wool pass through his hands. The smell of lanolin and oiled wood is the smell of my childhood.
In 1974 my father retired and I took over. I put my own savings into reinforcing the floor and replacing the heddles. My wife Karen thought I was foolish for sticking with something my generation had abandoned. The first shawl I wove without his help took four full days .
For thirty years it was enough. I wove around fifty shawls a year, sold them through three department store buyers who came up from Manhattan twice a season, and the workshop paid its bills. Repeat customers wrote letters. My son was born. Karen kept the books.
Then the Manhattan buyers started squeezing the wholesale price. My son went to college. Karen needed a hip replacement we didn't have full coverage for. I needed to sell more, faster. And I trusted the wrong people to help me do it.
"I bought one of Erik's cream shawls from a Manhattan department store in 1998 for my mother's seventieth birthday. She wore it every winter evening for twenty-two years until she passed. The wool still has its weight. My daughter has it now."
— Floyd Bishop, retired postal worker, Manchester NH
That's when the marketing nightmare began.
Three Marketing Agencies Forty-Two Thousand Dollars Lost Eleven Sales To Show
It started in 2007 with D.M. Digital , an agency a Manhattan friend recommended. They quoted eleven thousand dollars for a website redesign and a six-month "search visibility campaign." I paid the deposit in March, paid the second installment in May, and by July the principal had stopped returning my calls. The website they delivered was a template I could have bought for two hundred dollars.
I waited seven years before trying again. R.S. Reach in 2014 promised SEO results within ninety days. They asked for nineteen thousand dollars across the year — written into a contract I should have read more carefully. Twelve months later, my Google traffic had moved from forty-one visitors a day to thirty-eight. They sent me a final report celebrating the engagement metrics on a blog they had ghostwritten.
B.C. Boost was the worst because I trusted them most. In 2022 they convinced me Facebook ads were the future for craft brands. I gave them twelve thousand dollars over six months for ad spend, creative production, and "audience optimization." Of two hundred and forty thousand impressions, eleven shawls sold. The cost per acquisition was higher than the wholesale price the department stores had been paying me. I almost cried when the final spreadsheet arrived in October.
Forty-two thousand dollars in total over twenty years. Hundreds of hours pulled away from the loom for sales calls and strategy meetings. Dozens of customers I could have served personally if I'd stayed at the bench instead of taking pitches from people who had never once touched a wool shawl.
I'm not a marketer. I'm a weaver. I should have stayed at the loom.
What I Never Compromised, Even When The Money Was Tightest
The wool comes from a Maine sheep farm I've been buying from since 1981. Pure American long-staple wool , scoured but not dyed with anything synthetic. I could save thirty percent ordering from a New Zealand broker. I never have. The fiber length matters when you're weaving by hand.
Each shawl takes me two and a half days at the loom . Around eighteen hours of warping, weaving, and finishing. I won't speed it up by widening the throw or using a power shuttle. The hand throw gives the cloth its weight. The stitching gives away the shortcut every time.
The fringe is hand-tied, knot by knot, two hundred and twenty knots per shawl . The selvedge is hand-finished with a needle. You can feel the irregularity in the slubbed yarn — that's the proof a human made this on a loom that has been in this room since 1947.
I tried outsourcing once. In 2019, I sent a small batch to a contract weaver in Pennsylvania to test scaling. The shawls came back lighter, the fringe machine-made, the selvedge wrong. I returned the entire batch and lost six thousand dollars. I never tried again.
This is what you receive: a shawl woven from American wool, on a loom older than I am, by a man who can no longer afford to make compromises. Helen R. has owned hers since 1998. The wool still has its weight.
"My cream Halvorsen has been the only shawl I've worn through twenty-eight New England winters. The hand-tied fringe is still intact. I've never had it cleaned. Wool that good doesn't need it."
— E. Mancuso, 72, Casper WY
Why I'm Selling Direct: The Math Is Brutal And Honest
Each shawl costs me about twenty-six dollars in wool , plus eighteen hours of my time at the loom. At minimum wage that's another two hundred and seventy dollars in labor. The all-in cost on this bench is around three hundred dollars per shawl when I'm honest with myself.
A specialty boutique buyer from Brooklyn offered me thirty-two dollars per shawl last fall, intending to retail them at two hundred and ninety. I would have lost money on every one. I said no.
At seventy-nine dollars direct, I make enough to cover the wool, pay the rent on the workshop, and put a meaningful payment against the bank loan each week. It's not what the same shawl costs at the department store. It's what survives the workshop.
Every dollar I've spent on Facebook and Google ads has burned. The conversion rate on cold traffic was zero point one percent. I cannot afford to gamble that way again. Direct outreach to people who already understand handwoven wool is the only honest math left.
If six hundred of you who care about handwoven wool buy one shawl, I clear the supplier debt, chip about half the bank loan, and the workshop survives until next spring. Eight hundred and the entire bank loan goes too.
I'm not asking for charity. I'm offering you a shawl that takes two and a half days to weave on a 1947 loom, that retails at two hundred and sixty dollars in Manhattan, sold direct at seventy-nine. The math is fair to both of us.
How To Buy One Of The Last Shawls Direct From My Hudson Valley Workshop
This is open to anyone who values handwoven wool, not just shoppers chasing a lower price than Manhattan.…

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