Welcome Fabric Fans!

I am writing this blog before the year ends, but posting it after, so bear with me.  As the year winds down, there is a lot to think about for next year.  What will my new year’s resolution be?  Last year I successfully gave up soda and will continue on that path. This year, I intend to get back in to shape by running.  What is your resolution?   What are my business goals? The answer to that is obvious, SELL MORE FABRIC.  As a company, our goal is to embrace technology more and complete the integration of The Blank Quilting Corp and maybe even buy another company if the…

Dear Customers, Fans, Employees, Sales Reps, Consumers, Suppliers, Family & Friends,   This is the perfect time for me to express my thanks to each and every one of you for a great year and for everything that you do for our companies.  We try our best, year after year, to try to improve and grow. This certainly isn’t as easy as it sounds, but we do try.  We all work very hard in a challenging business, but continue to push on year after year and come in to the office everyday with a smile.    On top of the managerial type business challenges, there is the fact that the fabric business and fabric are not perfect.  Fabric…

Last week I had two work holiday parties.  One was in Greenville, S.C. for Fabric Editions and the other was in New York City for all the other companies.  Both parties were a lot of fun and all of our loyal employees earned a day to just chill out.    As my avid followers know, I am not so keen on public speaking, but it is just part of the job.  In any case, I reluctantly made speeches at both parties.  After the usual holiday speech monologue, I went on to tell employees that we expect them to work hard, value our customers, focus on details, question things that don’t…

Lately I have been approached by a variety of people about licensing for fabrics so I thought this would be a great time to discuss and explain fabric licensing to you.  This is one of the few times that I could say that my law degree paid off as I am in charge of all the licensing contracts for our companies.   In my mind there are two types of licenses:  1.  Big time chain store types of licenses like Frozen, Sponge Bob, Dora, Angry Birds, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, etc.   2.  Quilt Shop types like Pepper Cory, Jodi Barrows of Square In A Square, Buggy Barn, Kim Diehl, etc When…

Recently we had to ask our sales reps to stop selling some lines due to poor sales.  This is problematic on many levels and I will briefly discuss how it affects customers, sales reps and our company.  In spite of all the problems, one of our (my family’s) mantras is that the first loss is the best loss…in business and in life.  I can think of many occasions when I relied on this mantra and looking back it saved me further damage and stress.  Cancelling the printing of a line is definitely a situation where the first loss is the best loss as continuing to sell the line and trying…

Happy Monday!  It’s not often that I look forward to Monday, but as much as I love my two kids, 5 days with them starts to wear on me.  Between the 2 hour ride to Thanksgiving lunch, the sleigh riding carrying my little one up and down the hill, the never ending cartoons (Peppa Pig is my nemesis), the birthday parties, the sports classes, the bowling, video games, junk food, temper tantrums, difficulty getting them to sleep and the list goes on.  So thanks for giving me Monday.  Hope your time off was more relaxing than mine.   This is my final installment about swatchcards which will tie up all the loose ends.  Believe it or not,…