Time To Raise Prices
After reading my recent blogs on rising cotton prices, commodities climbing and escalating inflation, I guess it was probably obvious to you that it wasn’t a matter of if, but rather a matter of when we, at The Jaftex Corporation (FreeSpirit Fabrics, Henry Glass Fabrics, Studioe Fabrics, The Blank Quilting Corp., A.E. Nathan Co., Inc., Fabric Editions and 3 Wishes) were going to raise prices again.
We minimally raised our prices in January 2021 because we knew supplier increases were near, but didn’t know the breadth of them. We also wanted to blunt the size of the larger increase that we know was inevitable once we got a better handle on all the impending increases. Now that we have a clearer understanding of the increased costs, we can take a more targeted approach to cover those increases in one-shot now and update prices.
With that, after much back and forth with my brother, father and team, we made our decision. The decision is that we are raising ALL of our fabric prices on April 15, 2021 for all companies except Henry Glass who will raise prices on May 15, 2021. (Henry Glass releases new lines in March and May around this time of year and the other companies have new lines in April only. March was too soon.). The increases will apply to every item we sell and reorders too.
This past Friday, I sent out the price raise details to our customers. I will continue to do so for our overseas customers and anyone else who needs to know. It is so important that everyone is aware of the increases because we don’t want any surprises and I imagine our customers would agree and appreciate the heads up. The reason why I am so actively having these discussions and writing blogs about this is because no one likes price hike surprises. Also, that’s just not how we like to do things. Personally, I don’t like surprises either…..good or bad. Just sayin’.
Another big reason why we want everyone to be aware of the increases is that we are providing all customers the opportunity to order as much as they want at the current prices before prices go up. Therefore, if you are a customer of any of my companies, you should be looking into getting ahead of ordering to lock in lower prices. Again, we are just trying to be fair about this and give you time to pivot.
Please note that the aforementioned orders DO NOT need to ship at once. They just need to be on our books or in hand before April 15, 2021 for FreeSpirit Fabrics, Studioe Fabrics and The Blank Quilting Corp. For Henry Glass, they need to be on our books or in hand before May 15, 2021.
I want to close by thanking you for your continued support of my companies and our amazing designers. I can promise you that we will continue to serve you at the highest level possible and in no way will be cutting corners or making any changes to our products in light of these price increases. We will continue to provide you with top-notch fabrics for you to enjoy.
