Recently I attended and taught at a large quilting event in the Midwest. I realized while perusing the vendor mall that many vendors showcased practically the same fabrics! There were the usual pre-cut assortments from large fabric companies, duplicating book titles, and even look-alike sample quilts in several booths. I couldn’t help but think that vendors missed the chance to move their older fabrics by not offering pre-cuts they’d made up themselves. I talked to one shop owner who said it was easier to order current pre-cuts than to deal with slicing up old bolts. But, I opined, the old bolts will still be there when you get home…and that’s money already spent! Isn’t it time to get the older fabrics out the door? Time to take them on the road!

Then I remembered something Kizer and Bender had mentioned in their article in the last issue of American Quilt Retailer magazine. (pages 22-26, February 2016, issue #127). The business gurus suggested displaying lines of fabric in color progressions or rainbow-style.

There’s something universally appealing about a rainbow-style display of fabrics. It’s orderly and yet inspires creativity as shoppers run their fingers along the top of the bolts until they reach “their” color. The display invites them to choose and, like kids in a candy store always picking the same sweet, they will haul a bolt to the cutting table for yet another slice of their favorite shade. Why not apply the Rainbow principle to a bundle of pre-cuts?

Most strip bundles (jellyroll) are 2 1/2” wide strips and number from 40-42 strips per bundle. How about offering eight colors (six in the Rainbow progression plus black and white) starting with a solid strip of each color?  The progression is red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple—that’s six—plus some blacks and whites at the “end of the rainbow.” Roll the strips with the black and whites in the middle and then the progression of colors, ending with red. Package the strip bundle with a paper collar printed with your store name and contact info. The Rainbow bundle just became a marketing tool. Rainbows are popular throughout Spring and Summer. Rather than asking the customer to choose from all eight color groups, you’re offering a selection that would have taken most people hours to pick!

The Rainbow idea might be the beginning of an in-store competition. Who can make a quilt with the Rainbow bundle? First person to make something and post a picture of their creation on the store’s Facebook page gets a prize…

–Pepper Cory

American Quilt Retailer is pleased to welcome Pepper Cory as our AQR blogger. Her vast knowledge of the industry and her business approach will be a great addition to our team. Our goal is to provide another opportunity for quilt shop owners and industry professionals to communicate with each other. We’ll be working to make this blog a useful resource for you. Read on for Pepper’s first blog post.

First Dip in the Blog Sea

When the opportunity to write the blog Piece by Piece for American Quilt Retailer presented itself, I was intrigued. Sure I’d written blogs before but they were purely for personal interest. In my occasional posts on the blog Quilt Flap I chat about unusual antique quilts. When there was enough interest out there that I would be challenged to take more photos and in a month or three, write again. I wrote about teaching and my own quilting efforts-with an interesting family story thrown in here and there-in another blog called Pepper at the Quilt Studio. I viewed both my blogs as sporadic commentary on what interested me. If anyone who read the blogs cared to leave a comment that was cool.

But writing a blog for a business is a different breed of cat. One might even pose the question, “Why should a business write a blog?” When I delved into the subject, I realized there are numerous benefits to writing a business blog. I hope that in the future you as blog readers and shop owners will be able to relate to what I write, comment and communicate with AQR, and find in Piece by Piece some useful and thought-provoking snippets of information.

‘Snippets’ might seem an odd word to describe the content of this blog but that nicely sums up the first rule of blog writing: keep it simple, interesting, and to the point. Blogs deliver straight-to-the-reader information while at the same time a reader can use the blog as a channel of information back up the pipeline to the publisher by leaving a comment.

As a blog writer, you can learn about your viewers by checking your blog’s analytics. What’s that? Analytics are the statistics about your blog. They tell you how many people view your blog and which operating system your readers use (such as Windows vs Apple vs mobile phones). You’ll learn which topic lit a fire so that you can write better and more interesting content. And if you know how your viewers access you, you can design a smoother delivery, as in a simpler blog design that a phone user will appreciate.

And face it: search engines (such as Google) love blogs! Topics in your business blog, links to other websites, the photos on your business blog—all go out into the sea of information on the internet and get quoted and re-quoted and then linked back to both your blog and business website. But the thing I love best about blogging is that it gives your business a personal voice.

This blog Piece by Piece will come out every two weeks. We will bring you timely industry news and give you the “back story” on topics you first read about in articles in American Quilt Retailer magazine. We’ll pose some questions about our industry and give you a heads-up when our whiskers tingle and we sense a trend building. But most of all, we want to hear from you. Consider this your personal invitation to write to American Quilt Retailer and tell us the topics that interest and concern you.

 

American Quilt Retailer February 2016 issue