Yeoman, Le Petit Derrière, and more on 1/25

We have an exciting pre-order and restock coming up on 1/25. The Yeoman (which we promised all the way back in June!) and the new Le Petit Derrière (a smaller version of our popular LGD) will be available for pre-order, and a bunch of other favorites will be back in stock.  More details on the 1/25 Restock page.

Swift & Little Swift Pre-Order (Sneak Peak!)

Many have asked, and we are happy to report that we’re currently working out the details for a large knitting goods pre-order! We are bringing back the Swift, Little Swift, Yarn Stuff Sack, Tall Yarn Stuff Sack, Knitting Tool Pouch, Tool/Pen Wrap, and 3D All Fabric Organizer Cube. It’s quite a lot of bags and accessories to offer in a single pre-order and while it presents some logistical issues on the ground here in Seattle, we do think we can iron these out because, well, it’s worth it: these bags and these accessories just go together, so we want to offer them together.

We plan on offering the Swift and Little Swift in lots of fun color combos, but we do want to preface that there could potentially be some pre-order limits on certain colors, given new delays in receiving 200d Halcyon (more on that below).

March 28th Price Increase

By now, you’ve probably read something in the news about record high inflation, or you have noticed that prices on everyday items have drastically ticked up. At TOM BIHN, we have not been immune to these changes. We have seen substantial increases in our raw material and transportation costs since the beginning of the pandemic. As a result, we will be implementing price increases accordingly so that we can continue to run our business at the highest standards.

As some of you may know, our entire crew of 60 — design, manufacturing, shipping, customer service, IT — is entirely based in Seattle. We source what we believe are the highest quality materials from global suppliers, put thought into our designs without compromise, and continue to push forward with environmental and social initiatives as a certified B corp.

Due to various costs increasing over the last couple years since we last adjusted our prices, we have to implement a ~5% increase on most items. We understand this is a difficult time with high inflation everywhere and will delay the price increase until March 28, 2022 so that you may buy what you want at the current price. 

Low Quantity Restock

We're going to target offering what's become known as a Low Quantity Restock (LQR) on a monthly basis. The last LQR was a big one because we kept postponing it due to general busyness here at the factory and we had just done our year-end inventory counts. Because it was a big one, and because our e-commerce shopping cart updates variants one-by-one when we mass upload inventory (there is seriously a little hourglass next to each individual item as it uploads), it took something like 10-20 minutes for all of the LQR items to load: less than ideal for obvious reasons. We can't fix the way our shopping cart uploads, but we can make the list of LQRs much shorter by offering them on a monthly basis.

That's all to say: expect the next LQR to be sometime in February.

Supply Chain Slowdowns

Back to the potential pre-order limits on certain 200d Halcyon colors for the knitting goods.

The ports are still super backed up. Believe it or not, there’s a shipment of ours that’s been waiting to be unloaded since December 8th. And there are some important shipments of 200d Halcyon crossing the Pacific at the moment. We hope these won't have to wait too long at the port once they arrive. There are a lot of reasons for these delays that are not in our control, but we know the folks who work at the ports are doing their very best.

We are hopeful that snaps will be back soon. That will allow us to restock the Aeronauts (more on that below) for the first time since 2020 and perhaps the Road Buddy Duffels down the road!

Very Early Heads-Up on 400d Halcyon

This is a very, very, very early heads-up that the mill that helped produce our 400d Halcyon in Japan is no longer operating. Our supplier has been looking for a different mill to work with, but they haven’t had any luck so far. We will keep everyone posted.

In The Works: Aeronauts

We plan to make a minor update or two (don’t want to mess too much with a great design) to the Aeronaut 30 and Aeronaut 45 and restock them this spring.

New Designs? Oh Yeah

There are various new designs in the works, and we'll share more details once they're truly close to done. One design we already spilled the beans on (for better or for worse!) is a tote backpack. It stands up on its own, fits a wide variety of laptops, and is quite the sleek bag. We are currently testing it in a variety of applications. Here is a little preview photo below.