Amazon bought Fabric.com in 2008, and it is known for its wide range of products and low prices. An email sent to vendors says that today is the last day for customer orders.
Crafters, people who sew at home, and small businesses will soon no longer have access to a large online fabric store. Fabric.com, which has been selling fabrics, trims, notions, and other supplies for a long time, is going out of business.
Since it opened in the late 1990s, Fabric.com has been a mainstay for both casual crafters and small business owners. It sells fabric by the yard from hundreds of companies, as well as other sewing supplies. When Amazon bought the company in 2008, it said that the purchase would give its craft customers more options. The website’s huge selection and low prices made it a favourite among crafters and companies that needed to buy a lot of supplies to make things.
The Craft Industry Alliance was the first to say that the store was going to close. Employees of Fabric.com were told on Monday, and vendors whose products were sold by Fabric.com were told by email on Wednesday. The Verge saw the email. One vendor who didn’t want to be named so they could talk freely about the situation said they were shocked when they heard the news.
Amazon tells vendors in an email that today is the last day for customers to place orders.
The news reached fabric companies just one day before they were supposed to stop taking orders for good. Amazon tells vendors in an email that today is the last day for customer orders and that the company will “move quickly to wind down our operations.”
In an email to The Verge, Amazon said that Fabric.com was going away.
Betsy Harden, a spokesperson for Amazon, says, “As part of our regular business planning, we constantly look at how our products are doing and how they could grow. Based on this, we’ve decided to shut down Fabric.com. “Our main goal is to help our employees through this change.”
At the time of the purchase, both Amazon and Stephen Friedman, the owner of Fabric.com, said that the move would be good for business and customers. But in the last few years, vendors have begun to see signs of trouble. A vendor said that some fabric companies were paid late, but other than that, it seemed like Amazon didn’t even know the basics of how to sell fabric.
For example, one vendor told the Craft Industry Alliance that Amazon told them earlier this year to put their fabric on Amazon.com in increments of one, three, and five yards, even though wholesale fabric is sold by the bolt, which can have as many as 100 yards. The Craft Industry Alliance says that if fabric was already cut, vendors would have to measure and cut it themselves, which would be a lot of work. Management also reportedly asked if precut packs of fabric could be sold, which might sound like a good idea to someone who doesn’t craft, but seamstresses would know right away that it wouldn’t work. When you buy fabric by the yard, it usually comes in one long piece. If you needed six yards, you wouldn’t be able to get by with a few three-yard packs because pattern pieces don’t fit neatly into one-yard increments.
The person who sold the fabric said that Amazon and the people in charge at Fabric.com didn’t seem to want to sell the products.
“The people who were doing it didn’t know anything about the fabric they were selling.” They were not, in fact, selling fabrics,” the vendor said. “They didn’t really care about the things they were selling. They just changed the numbers. “
