I searched all Ravelry forums with the tag word ‘keystone.’ Found a bunch of boards, and started grouping them. Two patterns emerged: chatter about it stopped after September 2008, and a lot of people were confused.
Two camps were small but notable: the outraged and the ones who just shrugged it off as ‘normal business.’ Everybody else’s posts sounded a lot like I’m feeling today, concerned and desperate for some clarity on which companies are really doing what. There was a lot of back and forth with the clichéd he-said-she-said claims of, “Such ‘n such company keystone prices!”
To which a representative would inevitably respond with, “We do not!” And I didn’t see anybody backing it up, though a handful pointed to the blog Consumer Friendly Yarns.
The majority of the examining dialogues were on the Yarn forum. Those threads include
- Cascade -- not consumer-friendly?
- Lorna's Lace -- cheapest/favorite source?
- Keystone Pricing - An Impartial View
- “consumer-friendly" yarns?
Two other Ravelry message boards also examined keystone pricing, and those threads were
I saved my favorite finding for last, and I bet ya can’t guess which message board it was on! On it, I believe I’ve found the reason for the chatter fading away, and I can only shake my head at such a crappy ending to this un-American tale. Maybe it’s not the only factor that made us yarn consumers hush and just take it, but here it is; do with it what ye will.
On Ravelry’s LimenViolet message board I found post #3 on the thread entitled ethical yarn businesses. In it, a link was shared to a news story about the Supreme Court nerfing the anti-trust laws, effectively giving manufacturers a lot of ability to fix prices on the retail end. On our end.
‘Scuse me, but I gotta go eat a milky way candy bar or something . . .
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