Big Industry News!

It's official, the big box retailer Joann Fabrics will be closing!

Click on the image to access the video

Joann started out as a small local fabric store called "The Cleveland Fabric Shop" in 1943.  It was renamed Jo-ann Fabrics in 1963,  combining the names of the daughters from both families that had founded the original store.  The business bought up other fabric chains during the 1990's to expand its location holdings.  It became a privately held company in 2011 and a publicly traded one in 2021.  

It went private again after it filed for its first bankruptcy in March last year.   When restructuring after that one failed,  they announced a second bankruptcy earlier this month and had gotten approval last week from the court to start the process of closing 500 of its 850 stores in a further attempt at restructuring by putting the chain up for sale.  While I was away recently,  I saw that initial list of the closing stores and locations in this USA Today article and learned that both my own local store as well as the one in my MIL's town where I was visiting were on that initial chopping block.

At that point there was still a question of whether the chain would completely close or would find a buyer willing to keep the winnowed down group of remaining stores open as a viable business.  As Jen in the video above reports,  what has happened instead is that an LLC formed by a liquidation company and the suppliers still owed money by Joann's have purchased the rights to the company.  This means it's curtains for the chain!

I know many quilters did not support shopping at Joann's but for many just starting out and wanting to try quilting it was an inexpensive way to enter this craft space.  For myself and many other quilters it was a great source for "project filler" to balance out higher priced quilt shop purchases as well as a great source for quilting notions and other supplies like batting and storage containers at discounted prices.  Always loved using a good Joann's coupon!  I also saw a lot of videos where crafters who knit and crochet discussed how they relied on the large variety of yarns that Joann carried.

What many people may not realize is that Joann's was also a product source for many small businesses that rely on it to get materials for their handmade products.  

Click on the image to access the video

My DH and I frequently watch the videos of a young couple who are Early American reenactors and in a recent video they had talked about how the husband had sourced fabric from Joann's to create a vest (seen in the image below) in a fabric print style that (surprisingly) reflected a style that was common to the period they portray.        

Click on the image to access the video

This is also a huge loss for employees of the chain who have only had a year to plan for the possibility of losing their jobs.  At a time when so many federal workers are being pushed out of their positions, this may open up another big hole in the national labor market.

It is definitely the end of an era and I can only hope that there may be some benefit in the form of a boost to local quilt shops and small business online fabric and notion retailers to fill the gap left by the demise of this big craft retailer.  It remains to be seen if retailers like Hobby Lobby (which stocks a limited amount of fabric) and Michael's (who do sell notions but I've only recently seen start to sell Fat Quarters) may attempt to try to expand what they offer to pick up a portion of the market abandoned by the loss of Joann.   

It also remains to be seen what the long-term effects of any of this will have on the craft industry as a whole.  Two additional sources who I believe may also do some reporting on this going forward will be the Craft Industry Alliance and Abby Glassenberg on her blog at While She Naps.  It's never a dull moment in this seemingly "quaint" craft world!