Is Joann Fabrics REALLY going out of business for good?
Fabric doesn’t seem important to most people’s daily lives but to those that rely on a fabric retailer, this is going to hurt. Many sewists and craft artists have known the Joann Fabric name their entire lives and not many else. Certainly you could say the business will shift to Hobby Lobby by nature but their business is run through the vision of a conservative mindset and many sewists that don’t subscribe to businesses that use a religion to guide that company’s vision. Michael’s is easier to stomach if you think like that but they don’t really carry fabric. Nothing will be able to match what their reach was for in-person shopping.
From what we’ve been able to assess, they will, more than likely go out of business. This is the 2nd time in a year they have filed bankruptcy and it’s not secret to anyone that’s been in their stores lately, that they’ve really abandoned ship and the deck hands are left scrambling to keep it together if only to pay their own bills with the very low income received for working hard hours and putting up with grumpy shoppers annoyed by the chaotic look in the stores. In this USA Today article linked here, it says “Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, LLC, which recently bought much of Big Lots, would be the "stalking horse" bidder to acquire Joann, the company said. The proposed sale of Joann is "subject to higher and better offers" as the company "continues to actively solicit alternate bids." Gordon Brothers is a business that specializes in acquisitions and downsizing so it’s looking very dark for those store lights.
Those of us in the thrift, secondhand and reuse of fabric business are READY FOR YOU! We’ve been waiting, actually. With corporations raising prices left and right but it not really trickling down to the frontline workers, it was just a matter of time before people stopped putting up with the high prices and realizing that used/reclaimed fabric is not that out-of-the-question. In the nearly 1 year of running our business online, we’ve not had any issues that we couldn’t handle. And when I say we, I mean me. Yep, it’s just me here. I’m happy to help people find what they need and if I can’t find it, guess what?, I’ll ask around or give you this link where you can discover other shops across the US and Canada. (please make sure to give their site some love either by following their social media, throwing them a small tip for the work Radha does to maintain that list, or look though )
One last thought…..Go easy on the businesses like ours that are new to the fabric world. We are trying to reduce textile waste and bring them to you at a low price but it takes work that we’ll never properly be paid for. Additionally, a lot of us are not fabric experts and the variety and names of different types of textiles is so vast, it’s hard to know what fibers make up the fabric, even with burn testing. We DO love what we do. So if your able to wait longer than an instant amazon delivery, we’ll be more than happy to find what you need, even if it’s not within our own stores.
