Issues 41, 44 and 47, as sent. What a writer working from the voice guide actually produced — which is a different thing from what the guide says.
Lumen & Co. is a fictional clothing company. These issues were written for this course, to the voice guide, at the length and in the shape a real newsletter takes. The SKUs are the same ones that appear in Lumen's Q3 returns log in Lesson 7.
To upload them as project knowledge, use the plain-text version: lumen-newsletters.txt.
Read the dates against the guide's revision history before you use these. Issue 41 went out before rev. 5, which banned exclamation marks, and before rev. 6, which added the paired-price rule. Its punctuation and its prices are not a model. Everything else in it is.
Subject: The cardigan sizing, and January hours
The Lambswool Cardigan (LMN-KN-118) comes up about half a size under our other knitwear, and roughly one in nine of them comes back for that reason alone. It is the armhole rather than the chest, and Femi has measured forty returns to be sure. We are re-cutting the pattern for the autumn run and we are not going to pretend the current one is fine. Until then, take the size up. If you already own one that does not fit, send it back at our cost within a year of purchase and we will not ask you why!
The mending room is open to walk-ins on Tuesdays from 10am to 4pm through January. That is an hour shorter at each end than last year. Two of the three menders are on the autumn sampling until the end of the month, and we would rather tell you the shorter hours now than have you arrive at 9am to a locked door. Normal hours, 9am to 5pm, return on Tuesday 4 February. Rosa is in most Tuesdays. Femi is in on Thursdays, by appointment only, and books up about ten days ahead.
We take back knitwear at the counter. Any make, no receipt, no form. 2,180 pieces came in last year and 1,760 of those had enough sound yarn to be worth unravelling, which is what we do with them. The rest go to the textile recycler in Batley. We do not pay you for them and we are not going to pretend this is a scheme, because it is a cardboard box by the door with a sign on it. Bring them when you are passing!
Nadia, comms and complaints
Subject: The Waxed Field Jacket is delayed
The cloth for the Waxed Field Jacket (LMN-OW-221) is proofed by one finisher in Rossendale, and their wax bath failed on 3 March. Nothing already dispatched is affected and no order in transit is at risk. They expect to be running again in the week of 14 April, which puts our next delivery at roughly 2 May. We are not taking new jacket orders until the cloth is in the building, because we would rather not hold your money for six weeks. If you are on the waiting list, Marcus will email you on 22 April either with a real date or with the date he will have one.
Someone posted us a 1988 field jacket in a bin bag with a note that said “my father's”. The wax had gone hard and cracked along both shoulders, the cuffs were through to the lining, and one pocket bag had rotted out entirely, which is the state most jackets of that age arrive in. Rosa re-waxed the body, cut new cuffs from the current cloth so they do not match, and rebuilt the pocket bag in cotton drill. Eleven hours on the bench. £180. We sent the bin bag back with it.
The Quilted Gilet (LMN-OW-235) is £165 and orders open at 9am on 7 April. Eighty in the first run, which is what the wadding supplier can commit to before June. The shell is the same 6oz cotton as the field jacket, deliberately, so there is one cloth to hold in stock rather than two. Femi wore the second sample all winter and put 340 miles of dog-walking through it with nothing to report but a scuffed hem. If the first run sells out we will say so on the page rather than leaving the button live.
Marcus, orders and returns
Subject: Ten years of spares, in writing
From today every garment we sell carries a spares commitment printed on the swing tag. We hold the buttons, the zips, the thread and the cuff ribbing for ten years from the last day that style is sold. Not “while stocks last”. Ten years, and if we run out inside that window we publish the specification so somebody else can make them. The Merino Crew (LMN-KN-104) went on sale in March 2022 and is still selling, so its ten years have not started. The Cashmere Scarf is the first item covered from a fixed date, because we are discontinuing the undyed version on 1 August.
That is the whole Merino Crew. The two that go are the cuffs and the right elbow, in that order, and they account for 84 of the 97 knitwear mends we did last year. The cuff ribbing is knitted separately and grafted on rather than knitted in one piece, which is the single decision that makes the repair possible and the reason the jumper costs us £4.10 more to make. Rosa filmed a cuff graft on the bench camera in one take, twelve minutes, no narration.
Sixty more Quilted Gilets land on 30 June. £165 new. £22 to have the zip replaced, which is the only part of the gilet you cannot mend at your kitchen table. The first run has been out for ten weeks and four have come back: two sizing, one wadding shifted in the wash, and one that had been through a tumble dryer at high heat twice. Dana has stopped quoting a return rate on a sample of eighty, because sixty more will not make the number mean anything either. We will say something useful at five hundred units.
Full time. Four days in the mending room, one on the counter. £28,600, and we print it here rather than making you ask. You need to be able to graft a cuff that will be looked at closely by the person who paid for it, and you need to be able to tell someone their coat is not worth mending. Everything else we will teach you. Rosa has been here six years and arrived from upholstery. Marcus reads every application and applications close on 4 July.
Nadia, comms and complaints