[quote=Favorite Fabrics]
Originally Posted by moonwolf23I know Connecting threads is cheaper because they cut off the middle men. Why don't the LQS's you guys have get together and find out who they are and maybe do one big order, which they can do if they combine their orders?
Or something along that lines. Not sure.[/quote
I'm not sure just what middle men it is that they're cutting out. If you mean the distributor... well, I can tell you first hand that buying directly from the manufacturer (a.k.a. textile converter) might save you 25 cents a yard if that. (Basically that's enough to cover the cost of freight.) Ditto buying in huge quantities. If you buy 3000 yards (a full printing) you will probably get a 25 cent discount. As to pooling the orders... the manufacturers are not going to consider it a "pooled order" if they have to ship the goods out to dozens or hundreds of little shops. Therefore, somebody would have to take charge, receive one large shipment from the manufacturer, and then break it up into all those small shipments. Guess what? That's exactly what a distributor does! So maybe you can't really eliminate *this* middle man after all.
If the middle man that's being cut out is the textile converter... that means you'll have to do your own contracts with the mills. There's only one that I know of that prints here in the US, and that's Santee. Other than that... well, you'll need to speak Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, because that's where the majority of the fabrics are all printed. Plus you'll have to be knowledgeable about international commerce and all the laws that come into play when you're importing goods. I think this is outside of the area of expertise for most of us, even those of us who own/manage businesses.
Oh, and by the way... most fabric manufacturers do let shops buy on a net-60 basis, meaning they are willing to take the risk and ship the goods, but wait 60 days to be paid. Who's going to manage this problem and assume this risk, for consolidated orders from many shops? Who'll do the credit check to reduce that risk? Or is it cash-up-front only?
Some things are not as simple and straightforward as we might wish.
You are absolutely right. There is nothing wrong with being adequately paid for services rendered.
Most shops calculate 10 % defaults on payment into the price (that means the consumer pays it in the end).
Here is where my anger knows no bounds:
How does anybody arrive at prices of US$ 10 - 20 when cotton growers get paid pennies per pound of cotton? How do you explain that the costs of printing are also only pennies/yard because poor people in so-called under-developed countries must eat and therefore agree to work for any kind of wages?
Somewhere in this unnecessarily long chain of many people with both their hands open to receive and the few people who provide genuine services, at some point in this chain of profit takers pennies turn into dollars.
I would be content paying reasonable prices (US$5 - 6/yard) for today's excellent cotton fabric if - and this is the BIG "IF" - if the people who actually grow the cotton and then know how to do the printing using the hard-earned skills of thousands of years - IF they would get at least half of that price.
That would leave enough for doing all those services you talked about in your post. Anybody can do those services. They don't require special skills like growing cotton and creating the end product.
Somewhere in this long chain of paid services the people with the least skills have managed to siphon off the most money.
How about some solidarity with those people who actually create the product? They need some advocates. Who should sympathize with them if not quilters who know the value of good work.