.Com Confusion Revisited

I am not sure why, but this topic has reared its head again so I figured that I would clear up the .com confusion.

Not too long ago, I got an email that opened my eyes to the madness of what is occurring on the internet these days.  In the email, the customer was writing to me asking how it was possible that a Studioe 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 Studioe fabrics was in fact being sold on walmart.com. This was in spite of the fact that Studioe 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.  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 and Wal-mart of course takes their cut of the sale.  This is not unusual at all and goes on all the time these days. 

With all that being said, before you berate me for selling Studioe or any of my other 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, Studioe, FreeSpirit, Henry Glass and Blank are not sold to any of the big box retailers. These brands are considered for quilt shops only and that is not changing anytime soon.

While I am discussing this, I might as well mention another interesting thing about the internet.  You could go to a site like sears.com and you may see some fabric offered (not from any of our Quilt Shop Only Companies).  In this case, the fabric is truly being offered by Sears.  However, Sears is not stocking the items.  They are just offering it and if someone buys the fabric, Sears has a company like Notions Marketing ship the product to the customer.  Sears makes a little cut of the profit and so does Notions Marketing. 

What this boils down to is that Sears is using their website real estate to try to sell as much stuff as they can without having to take stock in an item.  It is kind of like free money if you ask me because it didn’t cost Sears much more than the space that the offer was taking up on its website. Recently, we have had more of our larger customers asking to develop similar arrangements to this. In my estimation, this could be a bigger part of our future. 

In closing, let me just say that the internet presents lots of ways to make money without having to make big investments and this is just another one of those ideas.  If you have a nice idea like this one, please make sure to let me know. I promise to split the profits with you! 🙂

Have a great week.

Setting The Record Straight On .Com Confusion

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