Semester with Scott Week 5: The Warehouse

This is the fifth “Semester with Scott” blog post. In the first half of the semester, we focused on many aspects that ultimately lead right to where we are today…..the warehouse. This is where the magic really starts to happen as this means that the fabric is getting closer to arriving at your favorite quilt shop for you to purchase.

Before I get into the heart of this blog post, I wanted to remind you to make sure to watch the class video about the warehouse this Wednesday, November 18, 2020, at 7:30 PM Eastern on my @jaftexpresident Facebook page.

Please share my page and the videos with all your fabric loving friends as they will not want to miss this one. After the “Semester with Scott” video goes live, make sure to be on the lookout for the Sunday quiz on my Facebook page. You will have the opportunity to win some great fabric prizes just for paying attention and answering a handful of easy questions.

When our fabric arrives from overseas, it comes to us in big rolls like you can see in the picture above. Since we obviously can’t ship rolls that big (60-120 yards) to quilt shops, we need to cut the fabric up into more manageable bite-sized pieces. Think of all those beautiful bolts on the shelf at your favorite local quilt shop.

In the picture above, you can see what it looks like when the fabric is being double and rolled and cut into 15 yard bolts typically. After this gentleman finishes winding the fabric on the board and cutting each bolt of fabric, he takes it off the frame and puts it on a buggy.

When the buggy is full, it is moved over to the bagging area. When you watch the live video, you will get to see this in the flesh so make sure to watch the video. Anyway, the fabric is put onto a conveyor and covered with plastic which is then melted and tightened on the fabric to keep it safe from the elements.

After the fabric is bagged, it is then placed onto the shelves in the warehouse. Depending on which company’s line it is will determine in which building the fabric ends up. We do keep all the collections together as people usually buy full collections or several pieces from the same collection.

Now that the fabric is getting nice and cozy on the shelves, it is time to start pulling it off and sending it to its new home. The process is that we take all the orders that were entered into our inventory system and we print them up at the warehouse based on the date they are supposed to ship. Jimmy, who runs the warehouse, then divvies up the orders and has his different teams pull the orders i.e. they pull the bolts off the shelf, put them on the buggy and then move them over to packing and shipping.

The bolts are put into boxes (7 is the max weight), strapped, labelled and then they are on their merry way to your local quilt shop. The rest is history. Please make sure to watch the video this week as you will get to see all the machinery in action and it will be way more exciting than this blog post if I couldn’t say so myself.

Here is a quick recap of “Semester with Scott”:

• What is “Semester with Scott”? Read this.