Is Walmart to Blame? J&O Offers Soundboard for the Rise in Novelty Fabric Prices

As one of South Jersey’s largest and longest operating family owned fabric stores (45 years and going strong), we receive calls  from crafters, artisans, designers, sewing novices, and even expert seamstresses/tailors constantly. Some call inquiring about proper yardage for commercial projects, some call seeking advice regarding the characteristics and use of specific textiles, and still others call in a desperate attempt to secure hard to find and otherwise unavailable prints from the one source they know that has built its reputation on providing their customers with some of the industry’s most popular licensed prints and top quality decorative fabric at discounted prices over the years.  J&O Fabric Store even has customers who have been with us from the start and can still remember when a yard of a novelty cotton cost as little as $1.50. Unfortunately, though our reputation as a reliable one stop source has remained, the days of pulling out a dollar or two for a yard of fabric are long gone.  What’s even more challenging is that at the current rate the textile industry as a whole is going, what we pay for novelty prints one month, has the potential of increasing by the next without warning. Like  unstable oil and gas prices we’ve been forced to endure, we are experiencing fluctuations at every turn when it come to cotton material as well, as a result, everyone from the manufacturers down to the individual consumer feels the sting of it.

Update on Wal-Mart’s Fabric Reduction

The fabric industry was shocked when it became known in 2006 that Wal-Mart was planning on closing the fabric departments in most of its stores. Many fabric lovers reacted in disbelief to the idea that Wal-Mart would be closing out the fabric departments of over 1,000 stores beginning in 2007.The process has since gotten under way and has taken a toll on sewing enthusiasts everywhere, who feel that they’ve been left without an alternative to Wal-Mart’s fabric department. Is that really the case?

Although Wal-Mart was a dominant force in the fabric market, it was by no means the only player in the industry. Meanwhile, J&O Fabrics has upgraded its web site to better cater to the needs of its customers. With J&O you can almost recreate the experience of shopping in your favorite local fabric store from the comfort of your home. In addition to making our web site more user friendly, we have also expanded it to include such essential items as interfacing, linings, ribbon, scissors and trims.