Hey all,
Heard from two of the clerks in my wal-mart's fabric dept. that they may be closing that dept in January. Read this article in the local paper :
Wal-Mart closing its fabric department would be the best thing to happen to the fabric/sewing world in years.
gwh
Didn't this or some similar rumor go around a several years ago?
Personally, I wouldn't know, because I decline to shop at Wal*Mart. However, I have noticed that since that store opened up, my local Hancock's no longer has the wonderful selection of apparent overstocks etc. of really high quality fabrics on their sale table. Who knows, maybe they will come back.
Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.
What they did a couple years ago was pilot a program that only had pre-cut fabrics in some of the stores. That got shot in the foot pretty quick.
Personally, I shop in the fabric dept. there fairly often. Especially when I am doing costumes for the schools. We all know what the school budgets are like (practically non-existent!) So $1 and $2 per yard fabric is a huge boon for stuff like that. Can't find that at Hancock's normally. And for notions and patterns, Wal-Mart is a whole lot cheaper. I can get Schmetz needles there for about 3/4 the cost of Hancock's. The selection isn't huge, but I've found a lot of treasure in there over the years.
Guess we'll see what happens.
Sharon
I go to the fabric department in my local Walmart every time I visit the store - you never know what you will find. Sure hope they don't stop selling fabrics. It's a lot closer for me than either JoAnn's or Hancock's....and the prices are a lot better. Both JoAnn's and Hancock's have turned about 3/4 of their inventory into craft merchandise anyway and it's not often I find fabric I like at an affordable price.
Shar> > Didn't this or some similar rumor go around a several years ago? > > > >
"G. Wayne Hines" 'sniffed' in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Yeah, sure, let's get rid of *all* the stores which cater to the middle and lower middle class, ...who needs 'em, right?
I knew there must have been a reason I marked your messages as "not worth the bother" sometime back. Now it's permanent.
DS made his very first fabric purchase today at Wal-Mart, a piece of the blue "CARS" design to make his DN a dress for Christmas. He doesn't like shopping there at all, but what can he do when his favorite 8 YO niece wants it? Of course, you know who will sew it! He won't because he will be out of town next week. About fabrics in their stores, if there was any in the new style store in Plano, I didn't find it, and I was looking for it. Emily
That is a plain ignorant attitude. For many of us, WalMart is the last semi-local place where we can purchase fabrics. Yes, the selection is sometimes poor, but it is the only place I can go and get fabric, and interfacing, etc. without wasting a whole day to do it.
me
Hear, hear...
I buy that 1 and 2 dollar a yard fabric by the bolt. I that inexpensive fabric for many things, among them curtains (which I change with the seasons, it keeps the rooms from becoming boring)
Prepackaged fabric? blech.
me
There were suggestions several years ago they were going to sell only pre-cut fabrics, but that didn't happen. Apparently Wal-Mart has been telling some of its suppliers their products will no longer be required.
gwh
And in many cases, the reason Wal-Mart is "the last semi-local place where we can purchase fabrics" is because they are there and forced all the local shops out of business.
gwh
What will probably happen is that the store managers in individual stores will cut the size of the fabric selection. Not eliminate it. What Wal~Mart did late last year is change the way stores order and stock merchandise.
Prior to the change the stores were shipped items from the warehouses in bulk. Take fashion for instance. Toward the end of winter they would begin shipping out spring/summer clothes. The stores had NO say in what colors/sizes/amounts they received. They were shipped the clothes the same way the warehouse stocked them. So a store might get 6 boxes with 30 shirts in a box of assorted sizes and colors. If they were in an area where small and medium shirts didn't sell they were stuck with them and would red tag them or ship them back to the warehouse, who then would ship them to a different store or attempt to donate them to a charity when they changed seasons again.
The new method is for the stores buyer and manager to fill out a purchase order and select sizes and types of shirt they want and state the quantity as well (still no color choice on most items) based on what sells in their store. They are also being allowed latitude on what departments carry in individual stores. They can drop the amount to a set minimum if they desire.
In my local store for instance the current manager HATES guns. So the sporting goods department no longer stocks any cartridge loaded firearms. You can still buy a muzzle loader there because of the minimum requirement and they still carry a VERY limited supply of ammunition. However the secret is that ALL Wal~Marts still have the firearms catalog and will order you a long gun IF you know how the process works.
It is the same way in many other departments as well. IF they have a master order catalog they can have the item you want shipped to the store. The catch is that many of the floor people don't know about OR refuse to be bothered with it.
Your suggestion, not mine. We're discussing Wal-Mart, not "stores that cater to the middle and lower middle class".
:-)
gwh
That's very true here. There used to be one quilt fabric store and two general fabric stores here. Now there's one tiny quilt fabric store and no general fabric stores. We also lost our Alco that had a fabric department.
If people hadn't stopped shopping at all those nice local stores they wouldn't be out of business in the first place.
I drive 50 miles one way to a Hobby Lobby and 25 miles the other way to a good quilt shop.
Ms P
I go there for the same reason, as well as getting the cheap stuff for muslins before I cut into the saved-for-special $20/yard fabric. My DD is also still learning to sew, so I have her practice on the $1 stuff first. It is also convenient when I need something in the middle of the night and my favorite local stores, Joanne's or Hancock's are all closed. My best buy there was a whole bolt of pretty lilac flowered georgette that I used to make costumes for a ballet class.
Beth in "Lost Wages" (been lurking for a long time because work had me locked down)
And in many cases, the opposite is true.. Before WalMart came, we had no semi-local store here at all.
me
Several years ago, a shop owner mentioned that in her area there used to be 3 or 4 fabric shops before Wal-Mart arrived. At the time I heard from her, her store was the only one left and she wasn't sure how long she could last. She was trying to find and offer different items, but when she would bring in something new, within a couple of weeks, a look-alike product would end up on Wal-Mart's shelves at about her wholesale cost.
gwh
Perhaps. Or local shop owners decided not to find a niche market and to attract shoppers. We have several WalMarts here, but also have other thriving stores where you can buy from high-end quilt fabric to mill end fabrics. Granted, several small shops closed up but they had other problems.
I shop at WalMart. Sometimes as often as twice a year.
G. Wayne Hines scribbled while perusing news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Our WalMart has cut down considerably on fabric space. It's filled with craft items now. They've definitely changed, but fabric, patterns, notions, and other items are still being sold. I go there once in a while to find something to finish a project or pick up their sale fabrics. As far as garment fabrics,they've never had a lot to choose from.
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