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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Maximizing The Vendor/Quilt Shop Partnership
This week the sale force will be receiving their brand new July samples. Of course, they will be anxious to get on the road to see customers before too late in the summer when things tend to slow down. With this in mind, I want to offer up some general guidelines and suggestions about how to make the best of our customer and vendor partnership, as I like to call it. APPOINTMENT MATTERS: All sales calls must begin with an appointment. This is usually created when the rep contacts the shop owner by email, phone or in person. Please understand that when reps are making appointments that they are juggling…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Family & Charity
Hello Friends, For some reason, life keeps getting in the way of my blogs being posted in a timely manner. Shame on me! So I am sorry for being a day late…no excuses. This week, as always, I have loads on my mind. As many of my loyal blog readers know by now, there are lots of important things to me in life and in business. This week, two of those important things are: family & charity. Let’s start with family because family should always come first. Last week I was crushed to find out that, after going to the hospital for neck pain, my only living uncle was diagnosed…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Guest Blog
Dear Studioe Blog Followers, Today I am doing a guest blog on The Blank Quilting Corp. website about the American Honor contest. Please check it out. American Honor Contest Update Have a great July 4th! I will be taking next week off from blogging. See you in two weeks. Regards, Scott
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Stick With The Jaftex Companies For The Long-Term
Happy Monday to all, and of course, Happy belated Father’s Day to all the fathers out there and all the fathers in your life. I hope everyone had a great day on Sunday, I know I did. This week I want to talk about something that has been brewing in my mind since quilt market. The subject at hand is the major inflection point that I think we have reached in the industry. Based on my observations, I think the inflection point we are nearing in on is going to result in a healthy cleansing for the industry where only the strongest will survive and the weak will essentially disappear.…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Peppered Cotton Update
Happy Monday Y’All, I am going to take a little respite from my blogs on Soldier S and the American Honor line for a little bit to bring some focus back to Studioe Fabrics. And what better to focus upon than Pepper Cory and Peppered Cottons? If you weren’t aware, we just introduced 12 new colors of Peppered Cottons at the Salt Lake City Quilt Market which you can see immediately above. Please keep in mind that the colors on your screen may be different than the actual fabric. You know how that goes. Other than that, there is nothing earth shattering to report on these Peppered Cottons, besides the…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Unveiling Soldier S & Her Charity Of Choice
Before reading, please make sure to read the previous blog so you can have a full understanding of what has transpired prior to this blog here. Oh yeah, and happy belated Memorial Day!http://studioefabrics.net/blog/ Let me preface this blog with a couple of general comments. I am absolutely loving this story because it is real. Unfortunately, this industry is currently lacking a real story with some positive undertones and good vibes, so this is definitely welcomed. To the contrary, the buzz in our industry of late has been pretty depressing. Despite coming up with promotions and contests around the American Honor line, please note that my family and Jaftex Corp., are not just…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: A Touching Story From Quilt Market…please read to the end
I am back from the quilt market in Salt Lake City, Utah and it happily exceeded my expectations. It also defied a lot of the pre-quilt market predictions which is a good thing too, but that is for another blog. I guess that it was easy to exceed my expectations since they were pretty low. Did it exceed your expectations or not? The truth is that the the biggest challenge for me the entire week was getting acclimated to the time difference. It was only two hours, but it was exacerbated by the ungodly hour that I left my house on Wednesday…4:30 am. I am very pleased to say that…
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Piet would be so proud! A guest post by Pepper Cory
The following is a reprint of Pepper Cory’s post, originally published on http://peppercory.blogspot.com/ For the past couple of years I’ve been associated with StudioE Fabrics, the independent stores’ niche in the Jaftex Company. Other Jaftex holdings include Blank Quilting, Henry Glass, and A.E. Nathan among others. The line of shot cottons we designed called Peppered Cottons has sold well for the company. Explaining just a bit here: ‘shot’ means that the warp (lengthwise threads on the loom) are one color while the weft (the thread carried from side-to-side by the shuttle) is another. The blending of two colors can produce fabrics that are either subtle or occasionally startling. If the…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: My Quilt Market Crystal Ball Is Getting Clearer
I am headed to Salt Lake City, Utah bright and early this Wednesday for the International Quilt Market. In preparation for the market, I am running through a variety of scenarios in my head in anticipation of what I expect to see and hear. I hate to keep beating the dead horse, but I think for sure we are going to hear more about the sorry state of the Quilt Market and the fabric industry too. With respect to Quilt Market, I believe that low vendor attendance will be noticeable and this will be the talk of the show. Attendance will be down for many of the same reasons we have been hearing about over the last couple…
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Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Sad News About The Second Generation & The Heirloom Bris Outfit
First and foremost, I wanted to say that I hope all the mothers out there had a wonderful mother’s day. Of course, I wanted to give a special shout out to my mother, my wife, my sister, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, my aunts and most importantly Granny Isabel who is 96 years young. God bless you all and thanks for all you do. Speaking of Granny Isabel, she was married to my Grandpa Everett (2nd generation Jaftex Corp.). And, I am sorry to say that my grandfather’s second brother, Gilbert, died this past weekend. With that, I am sad to say that the second generation of Fortunoff’s has come to an…