Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Quilt Market Is Quickly Approaching, Here’s What You Can Expect From Studioe

Happy Monday To All,

The countdown is on until we start to pack our bags to head to St. Louis, Missouri for what will be something like my 25th international quilt market.  As usual, I am pretty psyched because I will have the great opportunity to show off all the new things that Studioe Fabrics and our other companies (Henry Glass Fabrics, The Blank Quilting Corp. & A.E. Nathan) have to offer. I will be at booth 2915 and I still have time slots available if you would like to set up an appointment with me.  Feel free to email me at scott@jaftex.com to set something up as I would love to show you all the new lines or just chat and catch up.

As you probably know, I have been pretty aggressive about putting out the open invitation to just about anyone in the industry who wanted to have a free dinner with me and a great crew of “quilting” people on Friday night at Ruth Chris.  We started with a small room and have since had to upgrade to a much larger room to accommodate all the additional requests. This is definitely a good thing!  That being said, it is time to rescind the invitation because if too many more people come, the night will lose its importance and just be a big mish mosh.  You could go to someone else’s party if you are looking for something like that.  I want to be able to try to talk to everyone attending and if more people come, it will be too impersonal and no fun.  I am really pleased with the mix of people that we have coming and I look forward to a great evening.  If you missed out this time, you will probably have another opportunity to join me at a future market.  I hope to have a couple of future blogs about the evening.

I wanted to let you know about the exciting Studioe Fabrics schoolhouses that we are planning for this market so that you can start marking up you calendars.  You aren’t going to want to miss these.

First up, Heidi Pridemore of The Whimsical Workshop will be talking about fabric book panels as well as other easy project ideas.  She will be in room 261 from 2:35-2:50.  Heidi and her team are our go to for all of our free projects needs.  She is very knowledgeable and creative and her schoolhouses are always invaluable for shop owners.  In fact, the last time she spoke, several people went out of their way to find me and tell me how great she was.  You can’t make this stuff up.  Anyway, you should make sure to come see Heidi perform. I am sure that she will be talking about the ever-popular Huggable & Loveable books that Studioe creates in conjunction with esteemed author Sandra Magsamen.  I have spoken about these books many times, but I call them books “on steroids” because they have appendages that hang from the top, bottom or side of the soft fabric book.  For example, we have hats, antlers, tails, feet, tires and so much more.  We can’t reorder these fabrics fast enough, so if you don’t know about them, you should certainly check them out and Heidi’s schoolhouse too!

Next up, we have Pepper Cory.  Need I say more?  No really!  Everyone knows Pepper and we are so proud to have her on our team.  She helped to put Studioe on the proverbial map with her Peppered Cotton shot cottons and we can’t thank her enough for that.  This time Pepper is mixing it up a little school housewise and not only talking about the Peppered Cottons. This time around Pepper is going to demonstrate a marketing campaign to help you sell fabric. That sounds like a must see if you ask me.  She too will be in room 261 and will be speaking from 2:55-3:25.  I am sure that Pepper will impress you with some fresh ideas.

Finally, we have Janice Pope of The Anything But Boring pattern company. In addition to being a pattern designer, Janice is one of our top fabric sales reps. Janice will be speaking about creating projects with non-traditional fabrics.  She will be in room 261 from 3:30 to 4:00.  I don’t know the entire agenda, but I know that Janice will be demonstrating ways to use gauze fabric and yarn dyed flannels to name a few.  I am sure that she will have a lot more up her sleeves.  So come on down to check it out as I am sure it will inspire you to step out of the box of just using 60×60 construction cottons since most everyone knows what to do with those by now.

That’s all that I have for you this week folks.  I hope that you take advantage of all that Studioe and the other Jaftex companies have to offer this quilt market.  I look forward to seeing you real soon.  And listen, it would be awesome if you came up to me and introduced yourself.  I love to continue to meet customers and people who read my blogs.  Safe travels.

See you soon!

Scott Fortunoff

Studioe Fabrics President