Whenever I
post thoughts on quilt shows I always get a few angry comments from those who
do not like what I have to say. Or more
accurately do not want to hear what I have to say. Sometimes I don’t even like
what I have to say because it puts me outside my comfort zone. But today I am going to discuss the current nature
of quilt shows not because it is what I want to happen, but because it is
happening. Reality has a habit of biting
those who do not pay attention.
For years my
company has been doing shows in our niche and I was happy as a clam. But I found myself in a situation where there
are fewer shows in the niche where I was comfortable. And the ones that
remained were losing ground. On the other hand there were new shows coming on
line every day. But still, many established
shows were not as productive as they had been in the past. For Quilter’s Rule
most of the new shows were marginal at best.
Okay, you can write off the reduction in productivity of shows to many
things; gas was expensive for a while and people traveled fewer miles, show
promotors increased the cost of shows and it took more sales to break even,
people split their discretionary income across more shows, and a host of other good
rationalized reasons. Then the number of
shows began to decrease slowly and that trend continues. But fundamentally, for Quilter’s Rule, the
game had changed. We were no longer
centered on the market. Oh, we were
centered on the market we thought was there, but it had shifted and how did
that affect what was happening to us at shows?
The question
became where was the market? Four things
have happened in the last several years.
Modern quilting has become a force in the marketplace, Handiquilter made
the sitdown longarm machine popular, and Westalee Designed introduced a foot to
use templates (Rulers) with a home machine.
Modern Quilting, which I do not fully understand and thus probably do
not fully appreciate, has large negative spaces crying out to be filled with
quilting. Quilter’s decided they would
really like to sit down and quilt and the Sweet Sixteen filled that role. Westalee
Design made it possible to easily quilt sitting down at a variety of home
machines without investing in an expensive new machine. Suddenly, people became aware templates could
to be used across a wider variety of machines and the market for Quilter’s Rule
enlarged dramatically. The final change
completing the change in shows is that nearly every show today has classes that
feature longarm machines and teachers.
Folks no longer have to go to a specialty show to get the education they
now want and the tools they now need.
We are now
centered on the current market with new products and revitalized products. More importantly we are listening to our
customers to help us find the market before it shifts again. That is the challenge!
