Posted on 01/09/2025 2:08:14 AM PST by Morgana
A beloved craft and fabric retailer with a history spanning over 80 years has quietly closed several locations across the country in recent months.
Joann, which operates in nearly every US state, has recently shuttered six of its 815 stores. Until 2018, it was known as Jo-Ann Stores but rebranded as 'Joann' to move beyond fabrics to embrace a wider range of crafts.
Shoppers impacted by the closures can score steep discounts during liquidation sales, with markdowns ranging from 50 to 90 percent in affected locations.
The affected stores are in Burlington, Iowa; Owings Mills, Maryland; Holyoke, Massachusetts; Ithaca, New York; Hickory, North Carolina; and Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Joann filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March last year after pandemic-era sales growth faded, leaving the retailer with $1.2 billion in debt.
It emerged from bankruptcy the next month - with 815 stores across 49 states - after creditors agreed to cancel $505 million in debt in exchange for ownership of the company.
Joann is the latest retailer to face challenges after experiencing a pandemic-era sales boom. With Americans now returning to work, the surge in home crafting has significantly declined.
Home organization specialist The Container Store suffered the same fate, and filed for bankruptcy last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Their sales women were very rude too. I miss Piece Goods Shop.
My wife would occasionally buy quarters [I think they are called?] for quilting.
I didn’t think there were many people buying fabrics for sewing like there used to be.
I do recall an indifferent sales staff...
I used to hours upon hours shopping at Joann Fabrics. They had helpful staff, and sold fabric you could use for clothing. My friends and I LOVED Joann.
Now the staff is nasty, and ignorant about sewing. Most stores rarely have fabric suitable for clothing, with only crafting stuff — 100% cotton, fleece and flannel. Some stores have NO blends for clothing.
Artificial flowers, baking equipment, tchotchkes, ornaments. If they’re dying, it’s by suicide.
Fat quarters. I still have fat quarters I bought at Joann 20 years ago. Now the quality has deteriorated.
bkmk
I can see why they’d close the Ithaca, NY (aka The City of Evil) store.
Wrong demographic there.
Think about how much it costs to ‘re-brand’ a business; Everything has to be changed- from the sign to the placards to the employee pay checks and name tags. And the ‘specialists’ that will be hired to ‘handle’ and ‘co-ordinate’ the re-branding will be paid up front.
You’d think that someone in the CoC would realize that the changes made to modernize are what’s killing the stores and do a rollback rather than a rebrand.
It seems to me investing that money in the company would do more to save it than changing the name.
Oh, I loved Piece Goods!
Now Big Lots are closing as well. Then there is another big name store closing - I can’t remember the name but thank you, Joe Biden!
My GF in High School used to live in that store.
Part of this has to be the fact you can get craft stuff at Walmart.
We hardly make any apparel fabrics in the USA any more due to minimal demand. Fabric is made where the clothes are made. It is expensive to import, and since sewing is now a lost art few companies bother bringing in anything suitable for garment making.
Forced? This was self-induced. The chain was loaded up with debt since a leveraged buyout in 2010.
The local Joanns is filthy. Quite embarrassing.
“The local Joanns is filthy.”
It’s sad to say, but I’ve seen cleaner restrooms at Gulf gas stations in the ‘60s than most Joann stores now.
A beloved craft and fabric retailer with a history spanning over 80 years has quietly closed several locations across the country in recent months.
Guess it wasn’t all that “beloved”.
My wife is a regular at our local Joann Fabrics. I have a reserved seat at the cutting table.
Oh, it seems my local Joann fabric store is closing. I can’t say I spent a lot of time there. Their fabrics were gaudy and cheap. You could not get expert advice on their use. They had a lousy selection of photo frames. They barely offered anything for making jewelry or stuff for other hobbies. They featured a lot of home decor stuff which was not involved in home-crafting, the reason many of us would go there. Unless there was a sale, prices were high. I could get the same stuff across the street at Hobby Lobby or around the corner at Michael’s (which has greatly deteriorated as well). The store in Timonium (another Baltimore suburb) is better.
Joann is that it started as family-owned, moved to “professional” management a few decades or so ago, then maybe 15-29 years ago was bought by a holding company that also held Party City and Rite Aid, among others—all now failing, while the Ivy League boys have skimmed their cut off the top for the past.
They managed all their stores very badly, as if cutting fabric and knowing how to cater to dressmakers, tailors and other needleworkers is exactly the same as hanging blisterpacks of cough drops on a hook in Rite Aid. Minimum wage, horrible managers, total tolerance of monumental amounts of retail theft and items resold on eBay, etc.
They deserved to fail. I’m glad another company bought it. I hope the new company can resurrect it, because while some other companies sell various types of yard goods, no other company within 20 miles of this area has all the speciality items and fittings.
Because they pay minimum wage, give no zero training, and treat staff horribly. Friends of mine worked there, mostly moms and home-sewing-for-a-few-bucks ladies who wanted something to do when the kids were grown or who needed to supplement retirement. They were treated abominably. See my above post.
It's a vicious cycle. As globalism brought in low-quality goods to replace American textiles, who wants to buy it or wear it?
The fabrics made in Far East Asia (with some exceptions from India) are horrible, and even the print designs are foreign to American tastes -- especially to women who once knew American calico and "feedsack" cotton prints. The manufacturing standards are lower, so that the warp and weft are not anywhere near 90 degree angles to one another, and the polyester sleaze is not worth wearing.
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