Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Mother Nature In 2014 (A Word Play On The Weather)

Mother Nature has been a real….bit…bit….bitter cold lady this year. Her wrath has been fierce and the gravity of her weather patterns have been rainful (sic) and snowful. Not just for those of us in typically breezy and gusty areas, but this bit….bit….bitter ice lady has spread her turbulence and haze throughout the US. Polar Vortex, global warming, el nino, ozone depletion could be too blame, according to the flood of talking heads on TV, but who really cares about the root cause. It is what it is and all of us have to roll with the downdraft. We have no choice in the matter. Personally, the climate has affected my work in dif-front (sic) ways…mostly bad…which I will discuss more b-low.

Moreover, I will discuss how this has pressured all the people associated with my work and our fabric. Let’s start with work travel. I travel often by car, t-rain and plane and as I write this sentence I can only think how perfectly the movie Planes, T-rains and Automobiles depicts the suckiness of having to travel when a weather advisory is being deciphered from the radar readings. Airports and train stations have scattered crowdedness. Schedules are delayed. Flights are cancelled. I am sweating my butt off in my thermal underwear. The roads are a nightmare as they are slick and there are large potholes everywhere. Chalk me up for two flat tires. I think you get the point and have probably experienced similar atmospheric drama somewhere along the line.

Dew (sic) to the blizzards, hail and ice storms, our offices in NY have been closed for a couple days. Those days are gone and we can’t get them back. It is costly and there is no insurance for that. Even the office in South Carolina and our contract warehouse closed for two days and that is more or less unheard of. All days that we can’t get back this year or ever….it’s just an avalanche of problems. The days are gone as fast as lightning, a fleeting rainbow or a melting snowflake. Business and money more or less out the window for Mother Nature to burn and evaporate into the stratosphere.

For our dedicated traveling sales professionals, the road has been cloudy and misty and it has certainly taken a toll on their wallets and will. For our customers, you the quilt shop owners, you too have had your share of problems. You probably don’t even want to see sales reps because business has been so slow or just slower than normal.

Customers are too cold and too afraid to deal with the bit…..bit…. bitter lady and her ominous forecasts. Bills are piling up and some fear and depression sets in about how the first quarter will affect the year among many other converging issues like Obamacare, minimum wage, competition, etc. It takes a toll on your life and the stress can put you in a fog. Deliveries are probably delayed by Fedex and UPS throwing a wrench into budgets and the list goes on and on.

But I am not here to depress you. In fact, I want to calm you and get you excited about the chance of things heating up. So here is the brighter side, an untested theory by one Scott Fortunoff. The dedicated quilter and the ultimate consumer loves to quilt and has been home quilting rather diligently lately because that is what she does when she has down time. She is digging into her stash that she had been building for a snowy day and it is now depleted. Yes, depleted! This could be a cardinal sin of the first order. Everyone can’t wait for more normal weather and an Indian summer so they can go outside and spend their money that is burning a hole in their pockets. The pent up demand is building and it is hopefully going to translate into a tornado or cyclone of better days ahead.

I hope you are ready to ride the wave because it is going to hit so fast like a gust of wind, tornado or a flash flood. If you are not ready, give me a call as I have some great fabric for you. So smile because hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. Keep your head up, stay in the game and chill out. Better days are ahead for all of us. Amen to that! Signing off from The Studioe Studio, this is your fabric weather forecaster, Scott Fortunoff.