Welcome Fabric Fans!

Hi Everybody, No matter how you slice it, I struggle to meet my blog deadlines with everything going on in our offices and just life.  So here I am, Tuesday morning, with my Monday blog.   Last week, I attended a district/store manager show for one of the major retail chains. I had a table and explained to the attendees all the attributes of the fabrics that our companies were selling into the stores.     This is the third year that I attended the show. If you recall, during the first two shows I dressed up one time as a clown, using our costume satin fabric, and another time…

  Good Day To All Especially My Beautiful Wife, Today is August 18.  Do you know why this day is so special?   Today is my wife Laurie’s 35th birthday.   In lieu of a card, Laurie is getting a birthday blog.  Does it get any better than that? The timing of Laurie’s bday blog is perfect because (1) August has been quiet and I am a little short of material and (2) I am on the road today.  I am going to that customer show where I dress up.  This year I will be a baby…stay tuned.   Let me get back to the birthday blog because I don’t want to…

Dear TOAFGTE Reader, I have some big news to report to you today.  No, we are not buying another company at this time.  We are about to unveil the Jaftex secret weapon that we have been cultivating in clandestine fabric training camps around the world.  Drum roll please!  I am proud to announce that my older brother, Greg, has joined the family business. Greg had a brief stint in the family business around 20 years ago, but left after about a year to follow his dreams of being a stock trader.  At that time, the fabric business was more about the chain stores, unlike today where it is more about…

Happy Monday Studioe Fans Around The World, I survived the rainy weekend (ice skating, Planes movie, golf, basketball, playing with cousins, BBQ’s and the dreaded Dave & Busters) with my extremely energetic boys and I am ready to blog it up today.  So the subject of the day is going to be honesty. In business especially, honesty is the best policy.  I try to instill honesty upon employees and hopefully this is a policy you follow yourself in work and life.  To be one that blurs the truth, is a straight out liar or even a pathological liar is not a good quality at all, but the bigger issue is…

  Wednesday is starting to be a dreaded day as that is my blog deadline.  With that, I decided to move my blog to Monday so that I have a week to complete it.  Now Monday will be a dreaded day. I am still saving my stories from my School Houses at the Shipshewana Quilt Festival.  I will eventually get to them, but I wanted to tell an ironic story that I described in a couple of my schoolhouses at Shipshewana.    I am not a huge poetry fan by any means, but there is one poet and one poem that has always been near and dear to my heart. …