Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Car Fabric

In spite of my recent random act of kindness (RAOK) blogs having a really good feeling about them for me and hopefully you, I have decided to move on as two blogs on the subject were probably enough.  I was however tempted to go back to the RAOK and mention all the random acts of kindness that I saw at the Olympics among competing athletes from different countries.  Needless to say, the kindness, professionalism, humbleness, good sportsmanship and heart showed very much in the Olympics. It was really touching and brought tears to my eyes to see such awesome sacrifices.  It was fantastic to witness and should be a lesson to all, especially kids.

So moving on to today’s subject at hand:  car fabric.

No silly!  I don’t mean car fabric that has cars on it.  That would be a really short blog.  The car fabric that I am talking about is fabric that we send from the warehouses directly to our reps to sell directly to the quilt shop owners.  It usually includes assorted non-standard bolts (i.e. not 15 yards) and precuts.  This has proven to be a very effective way for us to sell fabric.  There are so many positives for the customers, reps and the company.

For the customers, it is an opportunity to get some instant gratification because there is no waiting whatsoever.  Maybe it helps to fill a void on the shop’s color wall.  Maybe the shop didn’t want to buy an entire bolt of the fabric and he/she was happy to get an 8 yard bolt.  Maybe the shop owner didn’t want to wait because he/she had an event coming up.  Of course, you can’t forget the fun of walking outside to look in someone else’s trunk to see what goodies they have.  I am sure there are many other positives, but the biggest one of all is probably that you don’t have to pay any freight.  As you know, freight is one of the most challenging costs to overcome for a shop owner these days.  We, the company, are paying all the freight to get the fabric to the rep.

Please note that car fabric is not intended to be a replacement for regular ordering, but rather, this is supposed to be in addition to that.  Therefore, you won’t be able to request fabrics from your sales person to get in their car, but instead you are left to select from the random assortment the rep has.  Sorry to disappoint you!

For the exclusive sales rep, the car fabric is also a good thing especially if he/she has a big car.  As it is, several reps are not carrying car fabric because they either don’t have a big car or don’t have a place to store the fabric.  In any case, it is an opportunity for the rep to get an instant sale. This is contrary to how most of our business is done as we typically pre-sell our lines for future deliveries.  In other words, you might buy a line this month, but it won’t ship until 5-8 months down the road.  So now the rep gets this sale today and will earn a commission for that sale the next month.  This is definitely great for the rep because it isn’t cheap to be a road warrior and it is important for them to have various streams of income.

Finally, for the company there are two very clear positives.  For one, we have a new manner to move fabric which results in an instant billing. Number two, it helps us to sell all the odd sized bolts that result from cutting so much fabric so often.  To elaborate a little, when the fabric comes in from overseas and is cut up, every bolt does not end up being a perfect 15 yard bolt.  It may be at the end of the roll and there may only be 7 yards left, so that gets put on a bolt and we still need to sell it.  You would be truly amazed if you saw how many short bolts we have to deal with on an annual basis.  Speaking of which, if you are ever looking for short bolts, please reach out to me.

So that is the story with car fabric.  Not a bad idea, huh?

Have a great week!

Studioe Scott