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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Thanksgiving Blog & QM Continued
Happy Monday All, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. Mine was so good and filling that I am exhausted from all the Tryptophan (chemical that makes you tired) in the turkey. Unfortunately for you (fortunately for me), I gave myself the day off from writing an in depth blog for today. With that, I couldn’t help myself but to comment on the QM saga. Why not? To be honest, this is a real sleeper. You hear me yawning? No one really cares. Everyone is praying for a miracle and its name is not Scott Fortunoff. The first blog got some interest, but after that, not so much. The…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Hello Karey, Are You There? It Is The Future Calling.
Happy Monday folks! Now that many of you have had time to read my thoughts on Quilt Market (QM) and it’s future in my last blog post, I wanted to continue the discussion on how we can make QM great again…or at least try. Confirming what I said in the QM blog, based on the many comments, emails and calls that I got just this past week since the blog, it shows that people do care about QM. I know that many more of you have comments, so please share them for everyone to see. That being said, many people are concerned, including me, and wondering why Karey of Quilts…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Dear Karey
To: Karey Patterson Bresenhan & Nancy O’Bryant From: Scott Fortunoff of the Jaftex Companies Re: Making Quilt Market Great Again, Vendors UNITE! Dear Ms. Bresenhan & Ms. O’Bryant, Thank you both so much for taking the time to meet with me in Houston to discuss the current state of the Quilt Market (QM). As we discussed, after I attended the early morning QM vendor meeting, I learned that the next 6 QMs were already booked. That threw me for a loop as that essentially made it impossible to implement any of the ideas that I prepared to present in our discussion to make the QM…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Some Things Are More Important Than Quilt Market
Oh, how I know that everyone is so anxiously awaiting my post quilt market blog about my meeting with Karey and everything else in between, but I am not going to give you all that today. I am gathering all my thoughts and want to take my time in reporting back to everyone….or no one for that matter. The truth is that there are a lot more important things in life than the Quilt Market, right? So with that, you should all know that there are at least 3 things that come to my mind this week which are important and certainly a lot more important than quilt market. Veteran’s…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Market Review & Bits N’ Pieces
Happy Monday Everyone! The time has come for yet another quilt market. I am heading out this week and I am ready to sell some fabric….I just hope there are some people there who are actually there to buy fabric. You never know. I would have to say that this is probably around my 20th Quilt Market. Crazy! Instead of writing a blog on just one subject this week, I am going to discuss some Bits N’ Pieces which are short commentaries. Thereafter, I will do a thorough review as to what Studioe Fabrics & The Blank Quilting Corp. have in store for this upcoming quilt market. I know this…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Let’s Try To Make Quilt Market Great Again….Together
For my loyal readers, you are all probably aware of my recent discussions on how we can all contribute to making our industry great again (this is like Trump’s motto to make America great again). I am sure you are also aware of my past crusades where I have written against Quilt’s Inc. saying that they are sacrificing profit to the detriment of fabric vendors, fabric resellers and our industry in general. In short, quilt market is losing its importance and people just don’t want to attend anymore, they can’t afford to or they just don’t have the time to. So, with that being said, I am throwing in the…
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Teaching our craft to pass it on – a guest post from Pepper Cory
Pepper Cory has a few thoughts of her own following Scott’s post on Monday about mentoring. Follow along below. Teaching and passing on a craft is a subject we hear a lot about, but often don’t do a lot about. And that’s too bad. When I learn about a quilt shop that doesn’t teach, I am sad to hear that. Sooner or later, I’ll likely hear that shop’s gone out of business. As with most stores that supply and support arts and crafts, if you don’t teach, you miss your best opportunity for customer service and building customer loyalty. But teaching retail customers aside, in this posting the subject is a…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Have You Considered Mentoring?
Just the other day, one of the Studioe Fabrics sales reps forwarded me this amazing article about mentoring kids about quilting. It was written by Linda Thielfoldt of The Quilted Goose. Here is a link to the article if you want to check it out for yourself: http://lindathielfoldtthequiltedgoose.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-sky-is-falling-in-quilt-universe.html?spref=fb This was definitely a fresh angle on how to keep our industry alive and kicking. I must say that it was the first that I had heard of this idea. It had me wondering….why didn’t I think of that? Right? Recently, I have been blogging about the issues of the quilt industry, but unlike some others, I don’t think that the quilting…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Please Forgive Us!
Dear Friends, This past weekend my family went to Disney. Needless to say, I am tired, tired and more tired. It was so hot…especially for October. Nonetheless, we did it and we survived. God bless my wife for some excellent planning. My kids had the greatest time ever. In fact, I just finished putting my little guy to sleep crying because he misses Disney so much already. I guess that is the sign of a successful trip. I am still recovering from the sweats that I endured from all those roller coasters especially that Everest one that goes backwards when you least expect it in the dark nonetheless. It stinks…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Controversy Is My Middle Name
Uh, how I love to stir the controversy! Who is kidding who…controversy sells….just like you know what (fabric). With the lack of enthusiasm from my readers lately (excluding my most loyal reader Joanne….xxoo), I sure could use some controversy to fire up some insightful comments. I mean seriously, last week I thought I came up with this great blog idea about bathroom fabric displays and even went as far as offering a generous fabric prize to the best fabric in the bathroom shot posted on the Studioe Facebook page. All I got was a donut. Yes a donut a.k.a zero, nada & nyet. So what is the controversy? No, it is not quilt…