Fabric Shopping in Kuwait
 

On a recent trip to Kuwait I went fabric shopping with a friend (then followed onto Africa for a safari) I could not believe the prices there - $3.50/meter. All first quality quilt fabric, lots of Moda, Rilely Blake, etc. Wish I had taken an extra suitcase. Wondering why the big price difference! Not fair!!!!!!!!

Sound so fun!!! Congrats!

Guess they get their money from oil not material. Will you have to have taxes put on it before bringing home?

It's not marked up 100% in price. If you go to a fabric distributor warehouse and see the price the quilt shops pay for a bolt of the newest fabric then you realize how much mark up there is. New Riley Blake's fabrics are $2.75 a yard by the bolt and are sold in quilt shops here for $10 a yard. Have fun on your travels!:)

Wow, I would have had kittens on the spot! What great prices compared to what we pay in Canada.

wow.....again another example of: get the Americans, they are RICH, but isn't Kuwait where they have all that oil, no wonder those burkas are made of blue silk...they can afford it!!!!!!!

$21 here............ Even though that's for a metre (39"), still quite a difference :(

I would be buying another suitcase ... maybe even two!

Generally items being sold in a retail setting are manufactured for one fourth the price. For example, if you see a shirt that is $40, it probably cost $10 to make, was sold by the wholesaler for $20 to the retailer, and the retailer put it on the floor for $40.

In my prior experience in the Dallas, TX, area, many quilt shops keystone their fabric prices (double from wholesale) and also add a bit toward the shipping cost....like maybe $.25-.50 per yard. Doing this, why do you think that so many quilt shops are failing?

From that doubling of the price they pay to buy a bolt of fabric, they have to pay their staff, the utilities, the rent, advertising, newsletters, teachers, security company, bookkeepers/accountants/lawyer, cleaning crew, misc. supplies and tools, support the local guilds with door prizes, and hundreds of other expenses one never thinks about. And yet we constantly expect them to put their merchandise on sale, give *us* a discount, carry more and more inventory, offer free demos, and on and on and on.

I can hardly believe that current shops do this much differently than we did a decade ago. If shops are marking their fabrics up 3-4x the wholsale price now, then.........wow.

Jan in VA

Were the prices of suitcases high?