Originally Posted by QKO

Are you? Have you run a shop? Would you be willing to work all day, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day and pay to be there? See my first post. The cost of the fabric at the wholesale level is only one factor in getting it into the hands of the customer...

There are many good deals to be had online. Bear in mind though that what you are buying when you get that fabric for below what the shops have to pay for it, is manufacturers seconds, overstocks and lower quality goods. If this works for you, cool! Not everyone has to have the latest issues from the designers to be happy.

Keep in mind that many manufacturers, including most of the huge ones, manufacture two different levels of quality, one for the quilt shops and one for the mass merchandisers. Buying by brand isn't always a good indicator of what you're going to get. They also have seconds on premium goods, that they'll wholesale out at lower prices. BTW, the online shop that is selling at $4.99/yd is probably buying it for $1.75/yd as a second or closeout, or the fabric didn't meet the manufacturers quality standards. So they're more than doubling their markup. I don't know anyone who is buying first-line fabric for $5/yd and selling it for $4.99.

No offense taken by this online shop owner. :-D Everyone needs to do what they have to do to keep on doing this great hobby.

But please don't accuse shop owners of gouging. We're not.

Most of us are barely keeping our heads above water, and many of us have invested our life savings into this effort. If we can't charge what it takes to keep ahead of the bill collectors, we'll have to go out of business. If enough of us go out of business, who will buy the first-run fabrics that drive the market and make it possible for people to buy seconds, overstocks and old goods?

Originally Posted by Quilter2B

I know it would take many years to enforce the rule of supply and demand in the fabric industry but if people stopped paying the high prices eventually they would come down because the manufacturers would have an over abdundance of high quality product that no one will pay their ransom for.

Originally Posted by QKO

A more probable outcome is that, like the way so many other goods have gone, the only choices you'll have left is cheap, low-quality goods. Think of all the high-quality products that used to be manufactured here in the USA that you just plain can't get anymore.

Manufacturers will make the goods that consumers demand; if the consumers demand low prices, manufacturers will make cheaper and lower-quality goods...

It's just economics, and math...