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This is a huge bummer. A few years ago Joann's seemed like it was doing well. The internet offers a vastly inferior experience if you need to do things like try

This is a huge bummer. A few years ago Joann's seemed like it was doing well. The internet offers a vastly inferior experience if you need to do things like try out fabrics. Either people are crafting less or they are putting up with inferior materials. One of the big takeaways people need to understand is that inventory costs are eating these businesses alive. To keep a hundred different types of fabric available in hundreds of different stores to sell by the inch is expensive, as is the floor space to do it. On a cost basis you are never going to compete with an online store with one inventory, or a warehouse stores that move products in quantity and don't maintain inventory.

Shog9 2y ago
There are plenty of businesses that can and do compete with online, or do both (using their distributed inventory to reduce the time it takes to ship online orders). But saddling a retail company with tons of debt makes much, much harder; profits that should be going to restock instead go toward financing the debt. We don't really need to read tea leaves here to figure out the cause of death.
- legitster 2y ago
  Business School 101: Whether you finance your inventory or pay cash doesn't actually make much difference if it doesn't move. Costco or Walmart or any other retailer that is successful right now also uses credit to acquire inventory. (Costco has $10 billion in rolling debt and Walmart has $60 billion, btw. Both seem to be doing fine.) And again, the businesses that compete with the internet right now are doing it by keeping their inventory costs in check. They have either moved most of their "selection" to online-only, or they have done away with consistent inventory across stores.
squeedles 2y ago
The Joanns stores pulled double duty as their online warehouses. When you put in an online order, you got the stock from whichever one of their 800 stores had it. It was an efficient way to have two bites of the same apple.

Shog9 2y ago

There are plenty of businesses that can and do compete with online, or do both (using their distributed inventory to reduce the time it takes to ship online orders). But saddling a retail company with tons of debt makes much, much harder; profits that should be going to restock instead go toward financing the debt. We don't really need to read tea leaves here to figure out the cause of death.

legitster 2y ago
Business School 101: Whether you finance your inventory or pay cash doesn't actually make much difference if it doesn't move. Costco or Walmart or any other retailer that is successful right now also uses credit to acquire inventory. (Costco has $10 billion in rolling debt and Walmart has $60 billion, btw. Both seem to be doing fine.) And again, the businesses that compete with the internet right now are doing it by keeping their inventory costs in check. They have either moved most of their "selection" to online-only, or they have done away with consistent inventory across stores.

squeedles 2y ago

The Joanns stores pulled double duty as their online warehouses. When you put in an online order, you got the stock from whichever one of their 800 stores had it. It was an efficient way to have two bites of the same apple.