Quilt Market Breakdown

I am calling this blog, “Quilt Market Breakdown” as in a synopsis of all things quilt market and how it relates to my companies. Ironically, when the quilt market is over, we call the taking down of the booths “breakdown” too. With that, I am looking more forward to the second breakdown as I am not hearing such great things about market attendance.

First things first, for all shop owners attending market, below are the Jaftex Company booth details. I want to remind everyone that this show is for shop owners and not consumers. With that, I don’t mean to tease consumers, but I do like you all to have an idea and understanding as to what one would expect at quilt market. Moreover, I will be taping many Facebook live videos during the show that you can view on my @jaftexpresident Facebook page. Typical videos consist of booth tours and interviews with well known designers. Keep your eye out for those videos Friday around 9-10ish am central time and more to come spontaneously as the days go on (mostly Friday & Saturday). Keep your Facebook close.

SCHOOLHOUSES

For those of you that don’t know much about the quilt market, there is a series of schoolhouses the day before the actual show floor opens up to shop owners. Schoolhouses are comprised of all sorts of classes geared towards helping retailers be better business people. My companies sponsor several of them as we of course want to do all we can to help our retail customers. Since the info about all of our company schoolhouses are all over our social media platforms and anyone attending can get a class listing, I am not going to rehash all the fine details here. But rather, I am going to tell you that you can expect to see schoolhouses from each of these well known fabric personalities listed below. The names are in order by the times of the events based on each company i.e. Hope is before Janice for Blank Quilting. See room numbers listed also.

Blank Quilting: Hope Yoder (room 2202) and Janice Pope (room 2203).

FreeSpirit Fabrics: Anna Maria Horner, Katie Pasquini Masopust, Sue Penn, Anita Goodesign, Ann Caskey and Tula Pink. All are in room 2502b.

Henry Glass Fabrics: Leanne Anderson & Kaitlyn Kuebler, Janet Rae Nesbitt, Mary Jane Carey and Stacy West. All are in room 2206.

Studioe Fabrics: Janice Pope (room 2203) & Pepper Cory (room 2205).

For me, one of the most important reasons that I attend market is to see our international distributors. The reason for that is that they preview our future lines and help to guide us as to what some of the better lines might be, for one, and maybe if there are some that we shouldn’t go forward with. I will show those buyers our newest April/May collections. I also will show them future lines and in this case those are the July lines. The international customers may make some suggestions as to things that we should change to improve the lines. Since the next group of lines will not be shown until July, we do have time after market to make changes. That was one of the greatest reasons, going back as far as I could remember, for attending market. Unfortunately, this reasoning of the past is fading fast.

For those of you that read Abby Glassenberg’s articles, you probably saw her recent post about the waning attendance and reduction in booths purchased at market by suppliers. Many vendors are recognizing that it isn’t worth spending zillions of dollars on the booths, as was the case in the past, and for that reason many vendors are shrinking their footprint or not attending market at all. We must not forget that we fabric sellers are in the business to make money and high expenses put a big damper on profits as nothing about the quilt market is cheap. For that reason, everyone is looking for shortcuts to keep expenses in check in order to either make more money or lose less money.

For the Jaftex Companies, outside of the first market when we purchased FreeSpirit, or the one that followed, we have been in major footprint shrinkage mode too. The struggle is that we really can’t tighten things up much more. The problem is also that fewer and fewer domestic and international fabric buyers are attending the show. The truth is that I know my reps will service our US customers perfectly well, so it isn’t so important for us to get the US sales at the show. I mean, of course it is nice to come home with orders, but if we didn’t go to market, I am confident that my reps would still get the business and probably more. When our reps work with customers in their shops, it is so much easier and more comfortable than at market. At market, it’s very distracting and everyone is on a schedule to go to their next appointment. That is just the reality.

Earlier I mentioned the importance of seeing international distributors and that too is becoming less important. Fewer and fewer of them are attending. Also, in the past these customers used to buy fabrics on the spot on speculation, but more companies are not making purchases up front, but instead are opting for allowing their reps to sell our lines and then send us the orders later. This is more efficient for them and results in less closeouts. It makes sense to buy what you actually need and not just speculate. Times are hard and companies need to run lean and mean so I get it. This works fine for us too because we don’t want our international partners to have to closeout a lot of our goods that they mistakenly purchased on spec.

The long and the short of it is that many of the main reasons why we attend market are “breaking down” and that is a problem that my business family and I need to address very soon. Trust me that we will be watching things very closely during this market and then having some tough discussions thereafter. With that, my fingers are crossed that we surprise on the upside, but praying is not a strong business practice.

Thanks for listening. I look forward to seeing lots of customers at the show and it would be nice if you could please stop by and say hi. I look forward to that. And finally, if you want to set an appointment, please email me at scott@jaftex.com.

Have a great week!