Welcome Fabric Fans!

My world is not perfect? Is your’s?  Businesses are not perfect.  Nor is fabric perfect.  With that in mind, the question today is how does one deal with imperfections? As I said, fabric is not perfect.  Sometimes we ship out a perfect 15 yard bolt and sometimes it may be a 15.2 yard bolt or even a 14.9 yard bolt.  Some people measure by counting the folds.  Some people weigh the fabric.  Some people actually roll out the fabric on a table and measure it.  Sometimes the fabric is perfectly tight on the board and other times it’s a little loose.  The point being that one can measure the fabric…

Happy Monday Familia,I hope you had an excellent long Thanksgivnig holiday weekend. I also hope that you are excited for all that I have up my sleeves in December. I want to make sure you could finish the year off with a bang thanks to me and all my Jaftex Companies (A.E. Nathan, Blank Quilting, FreeSpirit Fabrics, Henry Glass Fabrics, Studioe Fabrics & 3 Wishes). For starters, I hope you heard about my newest challenge called #SantaScottSentMe2019. If you haven’t heard, you can read up on that in my last blog which you can see here. In addition, you can find a few other details here. It’s the holiday edition…

December is such an awesome month! It is a festive time of year and my birthday is in December too. I have been so encouraged by the excellent turnout for the 2nd Annual #ScottSentMe challenge that I am stepping it up to add a Holiday Edition. YESSSS! The December challenge is called #SantaScottSentMe2019. This is NOT about how many shops you can visit in one month. Rather, this is all about spreading holiday cheer and awarding 10 people prizes for visiting quilt shops and taking appealing and festive #SantaScottSentMe2019 photos. Note that the more photos you take in different quilt shops in your festive gear, the more chances you have…

I finally got around to reviewing and analyzing all the suggestions that consumers posted on my @jaftexpresident page when I queried them for advice on how shops can do better and be better. As you know, I am a huge cheerleader for quilt shops and all my customers for that matter. As I always like to say, “Their success is our success.” Before I dive in, please know that I am going to be really blunt and honest because shop owners need to hear what the people i.e. their customers are saying. Also, please know that these comments may or may not apply to you. It is your job to…

In the Summer of 2014, my family purchased Blank Quilting from the Blank family. The reason why the family chose to sell was because they had made some missteps that put them in a tricky financial position. As such, they were forced to either sell the company or file for bankruptcy. Fortunately for them, they didn’t have to file for bankruptcy and were actually able to get some money out of it. When we purchased Blank, what was particularly appealing to me was the sales force that they had built. Unlike most of the competition, Blank had their own exclusive sales force i.e. a team of 20-30 individuals who were…

Welcome November! For fabric retailers, and most retailers for that matter, November and early December should be the time to make or break their sales goals for the year and become profitable if they are not already profitable. In anticipation of what should be the most prosperous time of the year, I am at it again encouraging shop owners to use short 1-3 minute Facebook Live videos to promote their businesses. I was going to make this a contest, but I don’t want to always have to offer prizes to entice retailers to do something that will help their own business thrive. I will however share select videos on my…

Busy, busy at Quilt Market! Check out all the videos on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/jaftexpresident/

Last Sunday, my dad and I met up with Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably and the Colchester Mill Fabrics and Quilting team for lunch in Connecticut.  It was great to see Kaffe and Brandon as I hadn’t seen them since the last October quilt market. I was surprised when they gifted me a gorgeous paperweight from Burano that you can see below. (As an aside, when I met them for the first time, I gave them a Paul Stankard paperweight from my own collection.) The present meant a lot to me especially because they are in the US for over a month and they only packed in carry-ons. So kind! Around…

Happy Monday To All, I am very excited, proud and relieved to announce that my second blog book is finally complete and for sale on Amazon.com. Yay! The book is a compilation of several of my blogs posts over the past 4 or so years plus some bonus material. With that, there are a few important things to tell you: 1. The most important thing is that all the money raised from the book sales will be used to buy more sewing machines for my sewing machine giveaway. I hope you know about my giveaway, but if not, it is where I give away machines to people suffering through tragedy…

Dear Friends, Over the next couple of days, I will be celebrating the Yom Kippur holiday…the holiest Jewish holiday of the year.  I got several comments and emails about this post when I originally wrote it several years ago, so I figured that I would post it yet again because the sentiment has not changed. Sorry for being lazy and recycling, but it is important for me to repeat these apologies again and again.  One can never apologize enough when wronging another person. So I am going to do just that. As you may or may not have known, this week will mark the culmination of the 10 days of…