Joann to shutter all 800 fabric stores after failing to find a buyer to save its locations

Just in time for the Greatest Depression when people will probably have to start mending/making their own clothes again.

Oh now it makes sense...that's the great they want to make America again...the great depression.
- You gave me this amazing mental image. I'm tempted to make one more about the Great Chicago Fire or the Great Flood of 1862 lol

Another bankruptcy driven by private equity.

More like "another bankruptcy driven by outdated business model". Leonard Green has owned them since 2010. If the idea was to strip it down, wtf took so long?
- Their "business model" seemed so shitty because it was after they were obtained by private equity who loaded up the business with debt and stripped them down to bare bones to look better on paper and do an IPO (2021).
  This is textbook private equity vulture capitalism. They even gave the CEO a half million dollar bonus the day before they filed for bankruptcy 😂

Grrr. That leaves Hobby Lobby for brick and mortar. 🤬

Michael's still exists. But they don't do nearly as much fabric stuff like Joann's does.
- Ya unfortunately Joann's really was the big chain for that. We bought my niece a starter sewing machine for Xmas at one last year. Michael's has some stuff, maybe they can fill the gap. Hobby Lobby can burn.
- This is the way
- I worked at a hobby lobby briefly and they expect so much more loss than another retail store I've worked at. Also, their refusal to implement digital stock keeping in the 21st century at that scale didn't help.
And Michaels, I suppose.
- Mine doesn’t sell fabric. :(

Looks like they were bought by private equity in 2010. 15 years later and they've sucked it dry, which seems to be happening to a lot of brands these days.

I'll always remember Joann as the only retailer who sent me marketing emails with no unsubscribe button.

I used to do tech support with them as a client. Worst IT team to work with, they were always impatient jerks. I never did figure out if the company hired shitty people in the first place or just treated them like dirt with no outlet for their stress except outside vendors.
Isn't that illegal? lol
- Yes. Per the CAN-SPAM act they could be fined $10k per email.

The buyer should have used the 20% off coupon

Jo-Ann is Harbor Freight for Grandma
- JoAnn had decent prices? Outside of fabric and yarn the prices seemed wack even on discount....
- I'm going to hang that quote on my wall
They never expire

Can I still use my JOANN gift card?
• All JOANN stores will be accepting gift cards through February 28

So, they can't give a timeline on anything else, and it's all subject to court approval, but they can just cancel all of the gift cards in 4 days? That is bullshit.

Just one of the many reasons why gift cards are terrible and should be avoided whenever possible.

When Toys R Us went bankrupt, my son had just been born. We'd been gifted a bunch of babies r us gift cards for the baby shower. I went the day the bankruptcy was announced and just went ape on diapers and wipes. Didn't have to buy any for like 6 months. They cancelled the gift cards like a month later.

aw, i did like Jo-ann's. So much nice fabric.

And a ton of other craft supplies!
\ This leaves us with homophobic Hobby Lobby for large craft supply stores.
\ Joann's saved me from ever having to go to Hobby Lobby and will be missed.
- Also Micheals!
  Please do not help the Green family further destroy Oklahoma, our democracy, and Biblical history (fun fact - their Museum of the Bible is stocked with artifacts plundered during the Iraq War. Someone else got them with some fake Dead Sea Scrolls - one of them of course with the anti-gay “clobber passage”)

I’m not one for sewing at all but my wife is crafty and Joann’s was always a fun trip. What a shame, gonna miss that place a lot.

With this, over time at least, competition can return in the shape and form of smaller stores
Maybe something for your wife to start? I heard the market just opened up
- Craft stores are uniquely unsuited to this because they have to have thousands of suppliers. Just due to the variety of stuff available at a hobby and craft shop, you need to deal in so many thousands of SKUs but any customer needs 5-10 of them at absolute best. The only craft stores that are still independent are those that are supported by the sales of large equipment and then can also supply the owners (sewing machines, looms, etc)
  This is mostly going to suck for costumers, home sewists who do anything other than quilt and machine embroidery, teachers and educators who use it for craft supplies, and probably anyone making home- health aids as a small business since they were a major support of open-cell foam in small quantities.
- Probably everything will just go online. I imagine that is a big part of what killed Joann in the first place.

I'm so upset about this. I don't live in a town that has a Joanns .. I go everytime in in the area... Shit sucks.

I enjoy sewing... But I need to feel the fabric first. :(

Gonna miss them.

Unfortunately crafts is a rich persons hobby these days. When people don’t have money they’re not spending much on their hobbies.

I feel like the biggest mistake was moving most of the stores from smaller more manageable spaces in malls to their gigantic department store sized spaces. For brick and mortar smaller retail spaces seems to be the winning strategy these days, especially since it can be supplemented with an online ordering & send to store system for items not kept in stock at the store.

Noooo this is the only fabric store around me

I bet both employees are heartbroken.

Even if they ran these stores on skeleton crews of like 3 people per store which would be insane, that’s still 2400 people losing their jobs
- Yeah, sorry. Joke was in bad taste.
  I meant to poke fun at how horribly managed the stores were and not at the people who worked there.
- how many bobbins of thread and square feet of fabric does it take to pay the wages of 2400 people?
  anecdotally I have made multiple trips to buy supplies from joanns but I'd be surprised if the net profit made off of my purchases surpassed $5 combined.