Walmart will no longer be selling fabric

Since I live close to the Wal-Mart home office, all their news makes it on our local news. What I am hearing here is that as they remodel stores, they are taking out the fabric dept.

Now, some of you will remember, a few years ago, they went to all pre-cut yardage in some of the stores. Many of us here contacted the headquarters and voiced our objections to that. They removed the pre-cut stuff and went back to yardage. Wal-Mart does listen if enough people contact them and there is profit to be made doing what the customers are asking for.

If you want anything done at Wal-Mart, your very best bet is to call

1-800-wal-mart and talk to them. If enough people take the time to actually call, they will listen.

My 2 cents. Do with it what you want, but please I think we've beat the "wal-mart is bad" horse to death.

Sharon

I could not agree more. I wonder if folks in 1907 boycotted Sears/Montgomery Wards/JC Penneys,etc. because they were "driving all the Mom & Pop stores out of business"? Consumers, for the most part, want the best product at the lowest possible price, retailers either find a way to meet that demand or go the way of buggy whip makers (or Montgomery Wards).

Home Depot/Lowes/Ace seems to have taken most of the market for hardware and building supplies. I don't think we have

*any* locally owned hardware/lumber stores here anymore. I don't boycott Home Depot, Ace or Lowes, however.

My 20¢

Beverly

"BEI Design" wrote in news:BrCdnWXsGc18TXHbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

well, no, because those stores were mail-order only at that point, not brick & morter stores downtown. they were mostly used for purchasing items that were not available locally, and therefore did not adversly affect local shops.

of those three, Ace is a franchise, and is closer to being a "local store" than HD or Lowe's. the Ace franchisees are allowed to purchase from other sources that the Ace central office, so they can (and do around here) carry local products along with Ace products. another franchise hardware store is True-Value. the local True-Value near me has it's own lumberyard with actual rough cut lumber (in other words, a 2x4 is actually 2x4, not

1.5x3.5). this particular store has been around for over 100 years & stuff stays on the shelf until it sells. it's great for those of us in really old houses, or who use odd things in sewing :) oh, i asked at Home Depot for rough cut lumber (i was building bird houses) & the chap working there walked over to a pile of lumber & said "this doesn't look very smooth" lee

My first reason for not buying anything at Walmart any more is because I never managed to find anything they sold that was of good enough quality to make it worth going there (they are rather out of my way in an area where I have to go when there's no commute traffic, which basically means 9 am to 2 pm). That was a good enough reason for me. We have a Target here that has good-quality merchandise and that gives back a certain percentage of the store's income to local charities. The last things I ever bought there were big and tall sized men's socks, because I couldn't find them any more. After going there a number of times and not finding anything I wanted to buy and finding a decent mail-order source for the socks, I just quit going.

I looked at Sam's Club when I got a free membership sent to me the first year they had >

This is dumb. The genius bean-counters tried this several years ago (thinking that anyone buying the sequins would want to make a secific garment, and would need exactly three yards). It was implemented in a few (new) stores, but then the standard FD (bolts, cutting table) was re-established.

Wonder how much groundswell they'll get this time? In many small towns, Wally world is the only F-store.

--Karen D. you'd think they'd learn!

So where did you hear this? By rumor? They certainly are not closing them out in mid-america where I live.

Betsy

There has been a big discussion about this over at the needlework (RCTN) & quilt (RCTQ) newsgroups. Walmart is in the process of phasing out most of their craft sections in *selected* stores. That's the official word someone got when the phoned Walmart. I do know that they have had their DMC embroidery floss on sale for ten cents a skein for most of a month now. I live northeast of Atlanta, GA and my Walmart had the floss on sale. I just visited DD in Lizard Land (aka Phoenix, AZ) and the Walmart in her area had the floss on sale as did the Walmart in Show Low which is in the White Mountains NE of Phoenix. The corporate line told to anyone who asks (and yes, I have e-mailed them about this) is that, while eliminating the craft sections (this includes fabric) of their stores is "under discussion", they

**will** downsize the craft sections in all their stores because the craft sections don't make them enough money. This is what they call customer service -- LOL! CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Juno

I was at 2 WalMart stores in Missouri (that's pretty mid-america) today and no fabric to be seen in either of them. The craft departments are being moved out of the corner to the middle of the stores. Just a couple of aisles of silk flowers and some scrapbook paper. There was a small display of yarn and even smaller display of sewing thread. These stores previously had huge craft departments.

Quite disappointing.

Cindy

Guess we are fortunate ?? at this point. I live in a town about 100,000 - AND - believe it or not, we have three Walmart Supercenters. Two just came in within the last two years. Two carry fabric and many buy there. We see a lot of Amish and Mennonites come in, too. So far people are adament about keeping the fabric area, so we'll see .. for the lady from Missouri, I also am from Missouri. Tried to go back and look over the posts to write privately to you, but couldn't find it. However, if you look at the population I mentioned, you can about figure what community we are. We are NOT a suburb.

Betsy

Most Wal-Mart stores get a remodel every 5 - 7 years. At your next remodel (whenever that comes), your fabric will disappear.

Cindy