Originally Posted by Favorite Fabrics

It's very sad to hear of local shops closing... and when I saw the wholesale prices of fabric rising so steeply beginning late last year, my first thought was that this was going to be a year that weeds out any shops who were "just hanging in there".

I know everyone loves a sale, but - to give you a shop owner's perspective - there really aren't any lines out there that we can buy, that will let us offer them at a retail price of $5 / yard.

So... you will ask, what about thousandsofbolts and 5bucksayard? They are buying closeouts and discontinued prints. Those are already "picked over" by the time the manufacturers make them promo goods. So IMHO they don't quite constitute "a line" at that point.

And even the promo goods cost nearly $3 / yard, and shops still have to pay an additional 20 - 30 cents / yard in freight to get the fabric in the door. How is a LQS going to make a go of it, on a gross profit of less than $2 / yard? I think they can't. That's why it is pretty much only the online shops that can offer the $5 / yard pricing. And even there, I've noticed that they often let you buy only in whole yards (or with a minimum cut of 1 yard). We all know that quilters *love* to buy just a little bit - maybe a quarter-yard - and that takes just as much labor as the one-yard cut that yields four times as much profit.

It's not easy to be a little shop. Especially this year!

Just offering the view from my window...