Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Bye Bye Website For Quilters

A couple of weeks ago, I got the most disturbing email that is going to have some seriously negative repercussions for the various company websites under the Jaftex umbrella.  Maybe your website and business is going to be negatively affected too.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, I am referring to the announcement by Dan Purcell, owner of Websites For Quilters (WFQ), about the fact that they are being acquired by Like Sew.

In spite of the fact that the notice said they were being acquired by Like Sew, that really isn’t the case.  See the except from the letter:  

“Like Sew has agreed to support our clients on the Dash system for an appropriate period of time.  Due to the difficulty of managing two separate systems, Like Sew is planning on supporting the Like Sew program in the long run.  As a result, our clients’ websites will be migrated to the Like Sew software. This may take up to a year.”

To me, it doesn’t sound like Like Sew is just taking over all of Website For Quilters accounts and continuing to run their business, they are making all those customers pay to get on to the Like Sew platform within a year.  In there lies the rub.  That is not a takeover to me, that is an attempt to get existing customers to transfer to a competitor for a fee…I am sure.  Being that we had 5 websites with WFQ, we are extremely disappointed and totally shocked by this announcement.  To add insult to injury, we were also working on an ipad ordering program with them too.  Needless to say, this is going to be a big setback for our companies and it is going to suck a lot of valuable energy out of people who could be working on more productive work.  In other words, this is going to generate a lot of negative energy.

We are now scrambling around to get this all sorted out.  The truth is that the most disappointing thing about this situation is that WFQ was an amazing company to work with.  The staff was young and aggressive and they were very responsive.  This is why we selected to work with them in the first place.  I don’t really know much about Like Sew, so I can’t comment on them.  Do you have an opinion of Like Sew?  I would like to know what your opinion is.  

As the Jaftexism goes, it is what it is and now we have to deal with it. Did you get blindsided by WFQ too?  What are your plans to keep this from disrupting your business?  If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.  I will keep you posted about how we sort this all out.  Wish us luck!  Thanks.

Have a great week!
Websiteless Scott