Quilt shops come and go. Since I started quilting 14 years ago there have been 14 shops in this area. 6 of them opened and closed. 8 of them opened and are still open. The reasons they close are as individual as the shops (retirement, burnout, life changes, etc) but one of the biggest reasons they don't just change hands is it's extremely expensive to buy a going quilt shop. If you are going to open a quilt shop it's cheaper to start from scratch. Several of the shops that closed around here tried to sell the shop but nobody had the kind of money it would have taken to just buy the shops.