ThayerRags

I don’t know about everyone else, but for the past few years, we have had to order our Fall & Christmas fabrics in June or July at the latest. Many times, we only have photos of the new fabrics when we order. We’ve been told that fabrics sometimes aren’t even made until they get enough orders to justify producing them. Most new lines of fabric that we can order these days are done the same way, with varying lengths of waiting periods.

As a matter of fact, we’re just this week receiving some fabrics that we ordered back in June of this year. If this fabric turns out to be popular, chances are slim to none that we can get more.

CD in Oklahoma

Favorite Fabrics

Thank you, QKO, for showing us "the bigger picture"!

MS quilter

Yes!!

QKO

Most of the Christmas fabrics are ordered in the fall for spring delivery. We get most of our Christmas fabrics in April/May/June.

In October/November/December, we're mostly getting fabrics that we ordered in April and May.

This weekend we'll be attending a buying show and ordering most of the fabrics that will be delivered next spring.

There is typically a 6-9 month lead time from the time you order fabrics until they're delivered, because most manufacturers base the amounts they have printed mostly on the number of pre-orders they have.

Iamquilter

Notice that all the time here.

Terricat

However, it is still a matter of supply and demand. If we, as the customers, are not willing or able to pay $10-12/per yard of fabric, the manufacturers will have to make an adjustment somewhere. As much as we all sent emails to Wal-Mart to bring back their fabric, perhaps we also need to send emails to the manufacturer/wholesale websites---if there is that option---to let them know that we just can't pay those prices. When the demand drops, perhaps the prices will also. . . . . . .

Lori S

When "times were good" and cotton prices were .95 cents per pound , it ruffly figured that 8 to 10 oz of cotton was needed to produce a single yard of cotton . So ruffly .45 to 50 cents is the cost of cotton reflected into the price. Again when "when times were good" a wholesaler purchased at ruffly $3.00 to $3.50 per yard. This meant that at the wholesale level ruffly 15 percent of the cost was relected in the raw cotton price. At the retail level ( assuming the traditional retail mark-up of 100 percent) the cost to us consumers was $6.00 - $7.00 per yard and the cost of the raw cotton is then only about 8 percent of the final cost to us consumers.
So concidering at the wholesale level only 15 percent is raw cotton pricing ... there is another 85 percents of costs that influence our final retail price. These costs were discussed in a previous post . With ruffly 80 - 85 percent of costs associated( at the wholesale level) with what we pay at the LQS being 90 percent non-cotton related .... there needs to be other influences before any of us will see what we can now call "the good old days".

QKO

This would be fine except for a couple of facts.

Because of the niche nature of the quilting fabric business, less demand doesn't automatically mean more supply and lower prices. It means that there will be fewer producers and lower supply, probably resulting in similar or higher prices. Here's why...

Fine quilting fabric represents a small fraction of the world-wide market for fabric, less, in fact than 1%. This is one of the reasons that manufacturing facilities for fine quilting fabric have decreased dramatically in number -- facilities have been converted to production of higher-volume, more profitable fabric printing and finishing. This leaves manufacturers competing for space and time on fewer and fewer printing and finishing facilities. You can guess what this does to prices. Lower demand for production facilities will result in still fewer of the specialized facilities required to produce fine quilting fabric.

Manufacturers and distributors have been absorbing most of the production cost increases already, for years, keeping the price of quality fabric in the USA at artificially low levels. They really don't have any choice now except to either lower quality or raise prices. Some manufacturers have been doing both, many have been holding the line on quality at the expense of being forced to raise prices.

Prices are more realistic, compared to actual production costs, in places like Europe, Canada and Australia/New Zealand. I'm sure our friends in those countries will be happy to tell you what real fabric prices are like, rather than the artificially low prices we have in the USA.

Basically, if you want low-priced fabric, there's lots of it available. You know where to shop for this low-quality stuff. But if you want high quality quilting fabric, you'll have to pay what it costs to produce and get it to you.

If you really want to lower prices on fine quilting fabric, what you'll do, as a community, is go out and buy more and more at current prices, whatever they are. This would have the tendency to create a more robust market where producers are attracted to produce more choice and variety, keep the plants busy and thereby lower production costs. Competition always tends to keep prices down.

Bluelady

This would be my guess too...

Ann912

Great news.