It's official, the big box retailer Joann Fabrics will be closing!
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| 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 corporation 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 for quilt fabric 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
3 comments:
I will surely miss Joann!!! They had fabulous sale prices on flannel, which I use for making baby items for a local charity, Bundles of Love. I've also bought interfacings, notions and their Black Friday sales were great. We do have Hobby Lobby nearby, but as everyone knows, they don't have the huge selection that Joann does.
I'm sad that Joann is closing. I used to shop there often, before quilting, and less so after I began quilting. But I did buy batting, quilting notions, and general notions like thread, and notions--pins, needles, seam rippers there. There are times when I don't need the absolute best quality fabric for a project, and now the in-person purchasing field has narrowed. Thanks for the great post, Vivian!
I have a different relationship to JoAnn, as they had already started trying to be JoAnn Everything Crafts + Cheap Home Decor Etc. by the time I started sewing around the turn of the century (gosh that still sounds weird to say!). I was hugely frustrated by the lack of selection and poor quality of garment fabrics at Joann; I can just tick off the list of things I spent hours laboring over as I learned to sew only to have the fabric start pilling, fading, or otherwise looking like garbage as soon as the first wash. In more recent years I have loathed shopping at JoAnn's due to the depressing aura of abandonment and decay, like a ghost town of what used to be an exciting creative hub. It's hard to put my finger on it -- understaffed with overworked, tuned-out employees, worn and dirty stores in desperate need of a refresh, and the overall low quality of everything. Then there were those awful coupons coming at you by email, text and postal mail. I would much rather shop at a store that sets fair prices to begin with instead of trying to manipulate me by setting artificially high prices just so they can have constant "sales," creating all this additional work and intrusion into my personal space because if you shopped at JoAnn WITHOUT a coupon you knew you were getting ripped off and overcharged. That just isn't the way to build any kind of loyal customer base. I am not one bit shocked that JoAnn is going out of business; I view it more like JoAnn is finally being mercifully put out of her misery. I don't see it as a loss, either, and here's why: Cheap, disposable, poor-quality fabric is not as appealing even to beginners as it used to be due to growing awareness of the devastating effects of "fast fashion" and the textile industry on the environment. Those looking for inexpensive fabric for projects can find better options repurposing the fabric from garments, bed sheets etc at Goodwill and other second-hand shops. The online shops selling fabric for garments, home dec and quilting offer an unheard of selection for today's makers no matter where you live, and the online tutorials, both free ones and paid online classes, are much more varied and specialized and generally superior to anything JoAnns was offering in person in recent decades. What's more, the online vendors are much more likely to be small businesses, mom and pop shops, SAHM ventures, versus a big corporate chain store like JoAnn. We have inspiration, education, and access to more in terms of techniques and materials for sewing now than at any time in human history. So yes, I can see how JoAnn's closing is sad for those who have fond memories of shopping there in its heyday, but I don't see it as a great loss for the sewing community as a whole.
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