CRAFTING THEIR OWN CAREERS

How The Woobles transformed a teeny-tiny hobby into into an empire of cute.

- Marina Khidekel

When Justine Tiu and Adrian Zhang launched their crochet-kit business, The Woobles, in 2020, their product resonated with a newly homebound population that wanted to craft, and wanted it to be easy. Their audience was anyone who suddenly found themselves with free time, for whom learning to crochet a tiny penguin, fox, or bunny provided joy and distraction amid uncertainty.

Tiu, 34, had a background as an education UX designer, and she perfected their kits by watching real people use them to learn to crochet, quickly adjusting the product to remove barriers to entry. She ensured each kit was prestarted to get the hardest part of the crochet experience out of the way, replaced regular yarn with a custom one that doesn't fray, and created step-by-step online tutorials that customers could unlock after a purchase.

This wasn't what the husband-and-wife team expected to do with their careers. Tiu and Zhang, 35, who previously worked as a director on Wall Street, found themselves restless around 2016 and began rejecting the archetype of success they grew up with: get good grades, get into a good school, get a high-paying job, the end. "We did exactly that and still weren't satisfied," Zhang says. Tiu, meanwhile, started crocheting to get her mind off work.