The Prices, they are arisin'
Have you noticed that everything around you seems to be going up in price?
During the month of March and April, it seemed like every email I would open from one of our fabric reps came with the dire warning with a deadline of “Wholesale fabric prices are going up. Get your orders in” by a certain date to avoid the price increase.
Yes. Every. Single. One.
Price increases are inevitable, aren’t they?
Operational costs of every kind seem to hike up ever so slightly every year. However, the increase in wholesale fabric costs this year has been substantial. However, we want to keep the same high quality, local quilt shop quality fabrics that we’ve had in stock.
Adding Tula Pink to our lines that we carry has been one of our newest, more expensive ventures into more fun and high end fabrics!
We also have decided to add in some more expensive, but desired fabrics like Tula Pink and more Kaffe Fassett. This does come at a price, as this company has a Minimum Price Policy in effect, and that includes for us. This experiment with Tula Pink has been very successful, and her new line, Lineworks, is just about sold out. What we have is here.
If you do see what you think of as ‘high prices’ for us - realize that we have to maintain these prices if we are going to offer some of these products as the prices are set by the manufacturer.
Kaffe Fassett fabrics are some of the brightest and most asked for fabrics in the store.
We changed our website host this past August/September, resulting in a much, much more efficient sytem. We have a better and easier and more user friendly system now, and it’s much easier for us to maintain. However, it did come at a price. That resulted in us paying 9x more than we were before for our website over the previous years.
Shipping costs have increased. That includes both outgoing on the orders leaving the store, and the incoming freight to us. We do charge $7 per order, but that does not cover the shipping on 90% of the orders that leave here. But, we believe that the USPS priority service provides the best service out there, and that getting your orders quickly with tracking numbers is worth the cost to all.
We do have other costs Lots of them, too numerous and frankly, depressing, to mention here. If you have a cost in your home, we have it in our business, and more.
Since last year, we’ve brought on two more employees, which also has increased the cost of being open and offering our services. However, by having these two employees, we are able to add fabrics daily to the website now.
This allows us to have fun and informational “Ken and Rachael” shows.
We also have doubled the number of panels we’ve gotten up on the website by having additional help. We now have one of the nation’s largest and most diverse selection of panels out there with nearly 1000 different panels in stock right now. You can find one for just about any occasion if you need a quick and easy (and magnificent) quilt!
We have decided to experiment with a few more more expensive, but hard-to-find prints, like some from Marvel, including the Spiderman print shown below. It’s digital and retails for $14.99 per yard.
High end digital prints like this Marvel Spiderman print is one of our newest more expensive fabrics that we’ve decided to offer at a $14.99 price point.
Some things can be controlled, but most are out of our control.
We’re currently working super hard to try to absorb these rising prices in our current price structure.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll address the ways in which we are dealing with the price hikes as well as some of the ways our customers are helping our efforts.
In the meantime, for your own education, you might want to read Scott Fortunoff’s blog post about Quilt Shop Price increases.
We believe that ‘informed customers’ are happy customers!
This post is a FYI and not a notice of an all around price increase at our store. But it is a notice that as our sources’ prices rise, we will be forced to as well. It probably won’t be sudden and in huge increments. Much of our fabric is actually purchased as close-outs, which is why we can offer them at such great prices, but the newer, more expensive fabrics are not and we have to pay more. And just like everywhere…if the wholesale prices go up, so do the retail. I’m sure you will notice this at fabric stores around the USA - whether in person shops or on line. This isn’t meant to scare you or to preach doomsday. Possibly most of you have already heard that “prices are going up” but if you hadn’t already, well, now you know.
Come back and visit with us. Thanks so much for your loyalty and support! We love being here and being able to offer the service of low prices, quality products, and a fun place to shop.
Have a great day wherever you are reading this! Stay safe!
Be sure to check out what we have for you in the store here!
Here’s one of the beauties we have!