Over the past few days there's been a flurry of postings about DMC France filing for bankruptcy. This is only for 2 divisions of the parent company and does not affect the portion of the company responsible for thread and fabric for the craft markets. You can find a press release here regarding the filing and sorting out some of the information. So don't panic - DMC thread will continue to be made and supplies are not impacted by this action in France.
We had a lot of trick-or-treaters at the shop on Halloween - our business district hosts a party for kids under 12 in the afternoon and they visit most of the shops during that time. We had so many we ran out of candy about 4:30 (they come between noon and 5pm). We wanted you to have some vicarious fun with us so we put together a little video clip of 3 of our visitors and of a great Halloween house in the neighborhood nearby. Hope you too had a fun a Halloween!
We'd been having difficulty getting thread from Needle Necessities since the beginning of the year and I thought this was a likely precursor to them going out of business by year end if they didn't get their act together. Unfortunately that turned out to be the case and Needle Necessities closed the business some time in September. We have never officially been notified by them they are closed but it has been reported by a number of reputable people, the website is now gone and no one answers the phone. So I think it's a safe bet that even though they did not inform their customer they were closing, that they in fact have!
We have limited supplies of their threads so order soon if you need something. The on-line catalog pages are not up-to-date with what we actually have as we've been selling a lot every day. If you place an order we'll send what we can but as it's moving so quickly, we are not doing stock checks without an order being placed. At the moment we only about 30% of the floss colors and they will likely be gone within a week or so.
There are rumors of a company doing a replacement thread but before I consider doing business with anyone making such a claim I would want confirmation they have the rights to the color formulas from Needle Necessities. So if you hear these rumors, just know we're waiting to see what the legitimacy of it is.
Elaine Warner, who founded NN and passed away a few years ago, would be sad to see the end of a company she worked so hard to build into such a great source of threads. But it was a great run while she had the company and it's too bad the present owners couldn't keep it going.
For those who will be taking advantage of our finishing services the deadlines for 2007 Christmas items are as follows:
October 1 - Pillows
October 15 - Stockings
November 15 - Ornaments
If you have an item to be finished after the deadline we can check with the finisher to see if a late item can be accepted. It's best to have items in by the deadlines to avoid disappointment.
One of our main distributors, Wichelt Imports, has suffered a serious flood in the warehouse. They are in a part of Wisconsin that received way too much rain in a short period of time and the warehouse flooded as a result. We suspect they won't know the extent of the damage for several more days but it's not going to be pretty. Fortunately no one was hurt.
Wichelt is the sole source for Mill Hill beads and treasures and Wichelt fabric. So our ability to get those items we don't have in stock will be affected by this. A guess at this point is that it will be 2-4 weeks before they will be able to do any kind of shipments since likely they'll have to move parts of the warehouse to temporary quarters. We'll post more details when we have them. Just know that for certain items the lead time is going to be significantly longer than it normally would be.
As you probably know postal rates are going up on May 14th. What you might not know is that instead of there being one class of First Class mail there are now 3 classes based on both size and weight. Since First Class letter is restricted to items of a certain size, thickness (1/4") and weight (3.5oz) most of our mail order packages will need to be sent First Class Parcel. As a result our minimum shipping charge will go from $.90 to $1.60. Our Priority Mail Flat Rate charge will go to $5.00 and Priority Mail Flat Rate Box will be $9.50.
Global Priority Mail has been renamed to Priority Mail International and it appears that the small flat rate envelope will be gone. Only the large flat rate envelope shows up in the new rates and goes up about 20%. First Class International (AirMail) is still based on weight vs. size and also has gone up.
We will be changing our online catalog to reflect the new rates once we have it all sorted out. Anything shipped after May 12th will reflect the new postal rates. Our UPS and FedEx rates have not changed.
We are pleased to announce a new rewards program for our customers - Stitching Has Its Rewards!. Over the years many of you have asked why we did not do punch cards or something similar and the main reason was that I could never figure out how to make that work for those of you who are mail order customers as well as our in-store customers.
Technology has changed that. I'm sure most of you are familiar with Gift Cards and Loyalty Cards that many national stores use these days. Gift Cards hold the equivalent of dollars and Loyalty Cards accumulate points (or rewards). We found a vendor of these type of cards who could combine both those functions into one card. So it's kind of a left-brain, right brain card :-). You can use it either as a Gift Card, a Rewards Card or both.
When you shop in-person with us you present your Stitching Has Its Rewards! card and if you shop on-line, via e-mail, phone or fax, you provide us with the unique 19 digit number on the back of the card. We then add points to your card for your eligible purchases. Points can be redeemed on future purchases.
If you wish to use the Gift Card portion you can order it with a specific dollar value and as the card is re-loadable, you can add dollar value to it later. Or have your family and friends do that for you! You can register your card and if you do so your gift giving friends can simply let us know you have a Gift Card and we can look up the number.
We hope our new Stitching Has Its Rewards! program will make shopping with us even more fun!
For Stitching Has Its Rewards! program rules visit our Rewards Program page or visit our Gift Card page to purchase or add value to a Gift Card.
It's with great sadness that we note the death of Chris Anderson of Tuscany Yarn here in Alameda. Chris had been battling breast cancer since just before she opened her yarn shop 4 years ago. Her smile and warmth will be missed by everyone who knew her. If ever there was a "glass half-full" person it was Chris and all throughout her war with cancer, she rarely let on how hard it was on her. She was always concerned about her family (Walt, Jack and Julie), her church, her friends and her business.
Chris's funeral mass was this morning at her beloved St. Joseph's in Alameda and it was a moving experience for all of us. With a packed church, it was clear Chris made a big impact on all our lives, even those of us who'd only known her for what was too short a time.
Tuscay Yarn is closed at the present time. What will happen in the long term is not known yet as the family has not had time to deal with that aspect of her passing. When we hear more news we'll post it.
Many of you may not know that we have a trade organization for independent needlework stores called The National Needlearts Association (TNNA). Every two years we do an industry survey both at the retail level (customers like yourselves) and at the wholesale level (shops like ours). Many of you participated in the survey 2 years ago and our association was very grateful for all the input. If you would like to participate in this survey (it takes about 10 minutes) please click here. Read on for more details on the survey...
When DMC discontinued Medici last year we were told by one of our distributors that they would continue to be able to get it as they'd made arrangements with DMC to be the sole supplier of it now. Some time between that plan and now things changed and the mill that was making it for DMC decided to no longer make it at all. So we were assuming that any colors we had ordered that were no longer in stock would be in the queue to get milled but that's not the case now. So as our supplier runs out there won't be any more. We'll remove colors from our online catalog shortly that we know now we will be unable to obtain. If you've got projects that require Medici I would advise tracking down the colors you need sooner than later.
There is not currently a direct substitute for Medici. Appelton Crewel wool is about 20% thicker but does come in a wider range of colors. Burmilana is about the same weight but is not 100% wool. It also comes in a good range of colors and we stock about 10% of the colors and can special order the rest. As other threads come out that could be a replacement we'll keep you informed.
