Ggburlew

After reading all of these wonderful ideas I realize you are all talking about our local shop!, Friendly, lots of classes, great machine knowledge, samples all over, 2 afternoons for open sewing and we can even use one of their machines if yours is too heavy to haul, great selection of fabric, web page and blog. Boy , do I feel fortunate. I could go on but just to say we are blessed!

KalamaQuilts

I stopped at a quilt shop in northern California some years ago and the owner asked me not to touch the fabric, if I wanted some let her come and get it. Boggled my mind. That is the only time in 42 years of quilting I've actually met the quilt police other than that I think quilt police are just in our mind...
I'm sure the name of the store is in my quilt journal for that year, but they are packed away.

Ggburlew

PS. Quilterscorners.com Ithaca ,ny

vjjo743

Which goes to prove who ever it was that said "maybe the 3 quilt shops that were closing could get together and share ideas and merge as one so they could stay open", now that would be a great quilt shop. You need a village to raise a child, well you also could use more than 1 person to own and run a shop.

cricket_iscute

This is a great thread. I especially like the points made about samples. It seems that shop owners should plan samples around a fabric line, and order maybe three bolts of each fabric to be used in samples, and keep the samples and the fabric together. Someone has to make the sample as soon as the fabric arrives.

I would make it a point to go to a fabric shop that has a tying table(s) for customer use. Being able to rent a long-arm machine (with lessons) would also keep me coming back, and while I was there, I would buy.

Customer service matters a lot! We have only one shop here. It is under new management now, but I got out of the habit of shopping there because most of the six workers were "too busy" to help and there was one full-time counter person who treated everyone rudely; many people either told her off or didn't go back. She was a legend in this town and nobody liked her, but she was a friend of the shop owner, who lost a lot of business because of her. When they put about 60 bolts on clearance, I asked her to cut one to 4 yards of fabric from about 25 different bolts. I was starting my stash then. I told her I was there for an all-day class so she had 8 hours, or I could have picked it up the next week. She made a face when I asked her and by late afternoon, she hadn't even started cutting. I bought no fabric that day. Not being greeted at that shop didn't help, either. Being made to wait 15-20 minutes to check out and having nobody notice didn't help. Having prices 50 percent higher than on the internet didn't help. When I do go in there now, I am looking for something specific, a particular type of thread or fabric. I often do not find it.

One other shop I went to, 90 minutes from here, was a nice shop in many regards. They had a good selection, good classes, good bathrooms, nice people, and I bought a lot from them. But one thing drove me crazy and eventually I stopped making the trip there, and that was that every time - each and every time - someone was waiting to be rung out, the owner or another employee ALWAYS decided at that moment to start a conversation with another staff member, leaving the person just hanging there waiting. The last time I was there, I was fourth in line, others in front of me had one or two items, and I waited 45 minutes. Ringing out four items, with her conversation, took 15 minutes beyond that. The shop owner kept making mistakes with the first customer but did not stop her conversation to concentrate on what she was doing. When the owner finished one conversation, she started another. Very rude. Wake up! The customer wants to pay, and that is what keeps the shop going. When I tried to buy a machine from them, the demonstrator, also co-owner and husband of the owner, was "busy" and after waiting an hour, I left and bought a machine elsewhere. On a previous visit, I had wanted to be shown that machine, but he only wanted to discuss my disability -- not something I wanted to discuss but he went on and on, and did not show me the machine in the time I had available. I told him I was interested in buying it at the beginning. So I would say good customer service, figuring out what the customer wants and delivering it, and focusing on the customer, matters a whole lot.

Wintersewer

If you sell machines you need a GOOD tech and he needs to be onsite most of the time. No shipping machines out for repair. I cannot stress this enough.

TanyaL

As was mentioned earlier, a successful quilting shop is a successful business first and a quilting shop second. The guide lines I have read from the SBA is that for a small business to succeed it has to have capitalization to run 5 years without making a profit. It takes that long for a business to establish a customer base, to make a reputation, etc. If you can't finance your business that long without a seeing a profit then you don't have enough money to start your business. Perhaps the best run quilts shops are not owned by the quilter or the sewing machine expert, but the person with the money who hires the quilter and the sewing machine expert. You probably need more experience in the business field than in the quilting field to make a success of a quilting store.

maybeblue

I would try to maximize impulse buys. It's amazing to me how many stores don't sell fat quarters, or who don't display them nicely. Lots of times I'll go into a quilt store, not because I "need" something, but because I like to look in them. I'm much more likely to buy something for my stash if the fat quarters are in cute arrangements near the bolts of fabric, rather than stuck in a corner somewhere. Kits are another thing that I know people pick up on impulse.

I think I would try to make a niche for myself...that is distinguish myself from other stores in the area...maybe carry more modern fabrics, more batiks, more something than the other stores do...that is have a little bit of everything, but specialize in something. It annoys me when I go to three stores in a city and see the exact same fabric featured in all of them. I know that there are tons more fabrics out there, I can't figure out why they all carry the same ones.

Mdaniels

I'm not new to sewing, but am to quilting. We are fortunate and have at least four quilting shops within 30 minutes. My favorite shop also sells and repairs vacuums and I think that helps them stay afloat. They've been around 20 + years.

Why do I drive 30 minutes to this shop, v. the ones that are 15 minutes away? I love, love, love the fabric selection. The staff are very friendly. There are lots of kits to try, large and small. Many patterns. The owner is on site and available. Nice selection of everything, but not a huge store. I don't think I've walked away yet thinking, "I sure wish they carried..." Prices are reasonable.

gramma nancy

My LQS had a wonderful Saturday open house to showcase new fabrics and books. Best of all, they several LAQ from the area who showed samples of their work, brought notebooks of their available quilting patterns, and were there to talk with you.

I gathered all their info and am going to take projects to each of them to see who does the best work and meets her promised deadline. I will then use her for the really big project I have almost finished piecing.