The Spinning Hand by Kari Capone – AOF Program Client

The story behind The Spinning Hand

Last summer, Kari Capone was ready to walk away. Her knitting business, The Spinning Hand, had been running on Etsy since 2007 — built slowly and carefully alongside a full-time career and a family. But summer sales were slow, revenue was barely breaking even, and she found herself asking the question every small business owner dreads: why am I still doing this? 

She applied to the Creators Momentum Business Accelerator, a program by AOF and Etsy designed to give creative entrepreneurs the education, tools, and community to take their businesses to the next level. When she got in, she was thrilled. 

How AOF education helped expand Kari’s business

The program gave her more than just information; it gave her structure. Kari learned SWOT analysis, cash flow management, and data-driven marketing. She revamped her Shopify site, implemented email flows for abandoned carts, and set clear return-on-ad-spend goals for Meta ads. “I doubled my revenue on Shopify month over month,” she says. She also came away with a growth plan she could return to whenever new opportunities threatened to pull her off course. “I have this plan. I can look back at it and say, ‘Okay, what’s really changed?’ Because probably the answer is nothing — and you need to stay the course.” 

With that clarity, Kari opened her first brick-and-mortar shop in downtown Maplewood, the town where she’s lived for 20 years. The Spinning Hand now serves two distinct communities: experienced knitters ready to invest in luxury yarns, and a younger generation of Gen Z and millennial makers discovering analog creativity. Drawing on her background in education, Kari designed a progression of beginner kits, each with videos, step-by-step photos, and written instructions, so new knitters always have somewhere to go next. 

Her long-term vision goes even further. Kari wants to open a wool mill — farm to table, but for knitting — that sources fiber from small American farmers and processes it locally, creating jobs and apprenticeships for the community. She envisions this becoming the Center for the Fiber Arts: a place where makers at every level can learn, create, and connect. 

With AOF alongside her, Kari found the clarity and confidence to keep growing — bringing the transformative power of knitting to more people, one stitch at a time.