Welcome Fabric Fans!

Now that the cat is out of the bag that prices are going up across the fabric industry, it is time for anyone who owns a fabric business to take a long hard look and re-cost their products out. This really applies to anyone who is in business where costs are rising, but truthfully this exercise should occur every year or every couple of years, to be safe, as things are changing so frequently. This is exactly what I had to do when we started getting price increases and I knew I would have to raise prices. I needed to take a look at all of our business costs and…

After reading my recent blogs on rising cotton prices, commodities climbing and escalating inflation, I guess it was probably obvious to you that it wasn’t a matter of if, but rather a matter of when we, at The Jaftex Corporation (FreeSpirit Fabrics, Henry Glass Fabrics, Studioe Fabrics, The Blank Quilting Corp., A.E. Nathan Co., Inc., Fabric Editions and 3 Wishes) were going to raise prices again. We minimally raised our prices in January 2021 because we knew supplier increases were near, but didn’t know the breadth of them. We also wanted to blunt the size of the larger increase that we know was inevitable once we got a better handle…

Let me preface this blog by telling you that all of the numbers that I am using here today are made up to prove a point. Anyone following me lately should know good and well that fabric prices are on the rise along with most other stuff that we buy due to inflation. With that, I wanted to walk you through some mathematics to show you how and why prices jump like they do when prices rise. The first thing I am going to do is walk you through an example of pricing prior to factoring in newly implemented price increases that we are currently incurring from the fabric print…

I am not sure if you all caught on yet to all the hints or not, but inflation is staring us all right in the face and I want you to be prepared. Last week, I explained about cotton and greige goods and how those commodities are rising. That is just the start though as I expect just about every commodity and input to products to rise. Thus, the commodity insanity that lies ahead. The writing is on the wall folks: PRICES ARE GOING HIGHER ON EVERYTHING! Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I am not trying to taunt you all with the negative discussions on pricing because, quite frankly,…

In 2021, I alluded to my belief that inflation (increase in prices and fall in the purchasing power of money) is going to be coming in hard and fast as we get closer to putting Covid behind us and getting it under control. We should all probably expect to see prices rising on loads of different products that we consume including fabrics. The basis for this idea is very simple. When the world opens back up PC (Post Covid), there is going to be such pent up demand for stuff that the economy is going to explode to the upside. That is why, contrary to what you would expect to…

Recently, you have probably heard me talking on social media about bringing more attention to male quilters. It’s very infrequent that I hear people talking about men quilters. Ironically, The Guardian magazine was also thinking about it too. Check out this article about “Sew Bros” and read about famous male quilters. In any case, sewing is cool. Really freakin’ cool if you ask me. It’s time to bring some well-deserved attention to all the awesome male quilters out there because there are loads. Personally, I find myself, more often than not, surrounded by lovely women quilters. That isn’t a bad thing as what man doesn’t like to be surrounded by…

Remember early 2020, say January and February? You remember 2019? Yup, those were the good old days……BC. Before Covid! Fast forward to 2020 past and 2021 present and everything is upside down. The struggles are real people. It’s crazy the amount of stress we all have to endure. For me, I can’t begin to tell you what gets thrown in my face every day. Lately, in particular, my phone has been ringing pre 8 a.m. more than it ever has while working at Jaftex. Unfortunately, only 1 in 10 of those calls is a good one. Some days, I get 3 or 4 of these calls before I even get…

On my September 21, 2020 blog post called Summer Excitement, I informed my readers about my family’s purchase of the assets from Blend Fabrics and Anna Griffin. Subsequently, all the former Blend designers were transferred into FreeSpirit and now the Blend name is retired. Today, I wanted to bring you up to speed on the progress that we have made with this acquisition and how pleased I am. The first thing that the FreeSpirit team did, upon closing the asset purchase, was to seek out a lead stylist to work with all these new designers that were to come on board. Unfortunately, Debbie, our current lead stylist for FreeSpirit, had…

Fabric, family, creativity and customer service are a few of the key pillars of my family business….The Jaftex Corporation. Above and beyond all of those important aspects is none other than….CHARITY. With that, I would like to start the year off by talking about charity with you all. From my adolescent years, my parents instilled the importance of charity on me and it has stuck with me to this day and don’t see any reason why it won’t stick with me forever. It seems very fitting that I ended up in the fabric industry as the people in this industry know how to give back and that makes me proud…