.Com Confusion Revisited Yet Again…..People Are Still Confused

I am not sure why, but this topic has reared its head for the third time. With that, I figured that I would clear up the .com confusion that is still running rampant at the expense of my companies.

Not too long ago, I got an email that opened my eyes to the madness of what is occurring on the internet lately.  In the email, the customer was writing to me asking how it was possible that a Studio e fabric was being sold on the walmart.com website.  My first reaction was, “No Way!” 

I clicked on the link and, low and behold, one of the Studio e fabrics was in fact being sold on walmart.com. This was in spite of the fact that Studio e products are for Quilt Shops Only (read:  not for big box retailers i.e. Wal-mart, Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc.)

Allow me to explain.  In spite of the products being sold on the walmart.com site, it was not being offered by big corporate Wal-mart per se or anyone at my company either.  It appears that, like Amazon, Ebay and all these other selling sites that Wal-mart has a place where people can post their own items for sale. Wal-mart, of course, takes its cut of that sale.  This is not unusual at all and goes on all the time these days as this is free money to those sharing their online selling real estate. 

With all that being said, before you berate me for selling Studio e or any of my other quilt shop-only brands to chain stores in the US, please delve a little deeper and don’t jump to conclusions. You will learn very quickly that not everything is what it seems to be.  Just to confirm, Studio e, FreeSpirit, Henry Glass and Blank are not sold to any of the big box retailers in the US. These brands are considered for quilt shops only and that is not changing anytime soon.

More recently, I got a very annoying email from a customer who replied to a mass email that Jaftex sent out. It went something like this:

I’m not interested in anything that will be sold thru Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, etc.

I replied, “These are not sold to big gox stores whatsoever. Where are you getting that idea?”

Continuing on, she then sent me this long email that she didn’t write, but fully believed. She took it right from somebody on the internet who had no clue what they were talking about because as we know, everything we read on the internet is gospel. Ironically, when you read it, it sounds like it is coming from a sales rep who should be more knowledgeable than this and not spreading misinformation at my expense. Here goes:

Many reps are quitting as fabric stores are buying less, getting buried in back orders and having to cancel orders. But could you be buying less fabric because your customers are finding your brands in the chain stores for half the cost?

Shop owner’s costs are increasing. The cost to simply flip on the lights and open the door for business is getting hard to keep up with too! Lights, rent, heat, insurance, employees I could go on and on! But I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir!

I need for my customers and their shops to do well. If you all don’t sell fabric I can’t sell you more! I was in Hobby Lobby before Christmas and what I found was disturbing. I felt a little sick about it, then got doing more internet searches and started to get very worried for all of us!! I was not aware of this and thought you may not be either.

She then went on to list several non-Jaftex companies that were selling to Hobby Lobby and the prices. I am not going to put those here because that isn’t productive or constructive. Then comes the part when this person demonstrates their lack of factual knowledge.

The person refers to the Fabric Editions website and writes this further down below. Mind you, I never said once that Fabric Editions sells to quilt shops only. You know why I didn’t say that? Because it isn’t true. Fabric Editions is our division that sells to the chain stores mostly. Yes, chains are their main customers! If any quilt shops want to buy the Fabric Editions products, they can buy them knowing that the items might be in the big box stores too. This isn’t something we hide. And to be perfectly transparent, the goods we sell from our 3 Wishes division are not quilt shop only regardless of the fact that many quilt shops buy them knowing they are in the chains.

JAFTEX which supplies all of them as you can see on the screen shot of their website attached below. Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Joanns, fabric.com AND Walmart!! They are even selling strip rolls at Dollar Tree now. Big box stores get to buy 8 yard bolts and pay less than you do. They have ONE customer service center because they are ONE BIG COMPANY.
Jaftex also owns these brands:
Blank
Henry Glass
Free Spirit
Studio E

How terribly annoying is this? How frustrating do you think this is for me with all the confusion it is creating?

As you can see, this person doesn’t know what they are talking about and this is bordering on slander and libel, to say the least. Moreover, this person makes mention of Jaftex consolidating their customer service team. That is about the only info that I have heard so far which is correct. There is only one problem, we consolidated customer service for all the companies except Fabric Editions. They have their own customer service. We are not one big company, but rather we are several companies owned by one family and in some cases, we share employees across companies. To me, that is prudent business.

In closing, I hope I rectified the .com, chain store and quilt shop only confusion as it relates to my companies. Let me be clear that we are very transparent and not trying to do anything to damage what we have built just to make a few extra bucks. Shame on the people who spread these untruths.