Originally Posted by
#1piecemaker
It is sad. A lot of stores just can't afford to keep the lights on. I don't think its all because of online shopping. A lot of it has to do with the economy. That and the fact that the younger generation are not learning to sew like we all used to.
I agree with that last statement. In the education program at the University of Iowa I've never met anyone of my 400+ peers that quilts. These are all 19-27-year-olds, almost all of them women. And I'm the only one that quilts. I over heard someone the other day complaining about how she didn't know how to fix a torn seam in her shirt and was going to throw it away! People just don't sew like they used to.
As far as the online thing goes, yes, I do think the online marketplace has a lot to do with stores shutting down but it's not just it being online, but the global marketplace taking over. It used to be that prices could be very different, for example cheaper in America than Canada, but now that we have online prices, all the local stores have to try to compete with prices from across the world. Think about how frustrating it is when you're shopping for a new quilting machine, you could get quoted $4000 in one place and $2000 in another. This is because, in some ways, the machine companies (Janome, Babylock, etc.) can get away with it. People still really need to look at a machine in person (or make a huge investment sight-unseen), and you can't do that online.
BTW, I was really sad when I heard that my LQS was closing but relieved when a new owner bought the place. I had just started really getting into quilting again about a year before the store started to close. Now I try to do all the shopping I can at my LQS unless I have a specific fabric in mind that they don't have (like the Dr. Seuss fabrics for the quilt I just finished, I still bought all my border fabric at my LQS).