{"id":11191,"date":"2024-02-20T06:58:39","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T19:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=11191"},"modified":"2024-02-20T06:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T19:58:39","slug":"why-shop-at-an-independent-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2024\/02\/20\/why-shop-at-an-independent-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Why shop at an independent store?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we have a guest post from Michelle, who has worked at The Crewel Gobelin<\/a> in Killara, Sydney for nearly 11 years. Michelle was one of my colleagues when I used to work there.<\/p>\n

Michelle wrote this as a comment on my recent post and has given me permission to repost. She wrote from an Australian perspective, however, the main points are relevant wherever you are.<\/p>\n

Over to Michelle:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many reasons to choose to buy from an independent shop rather than a big box store.<\/p>\n

Service: a real person will serve you. You don\u2019t have to hunt for it on the shelves, or have a drone collect it and send it.<\/p>\n

Attention: that real person will work out how much fabric you need, cut your fabric or collect your threads or work out a conversion to another thread type.<\/p>\n

Advice: having trouble with your project? Not sure what needle to use, or thread? Or how to transfer your embroidery design?<\/p>\n

Relationship: it\u2019s hard to have a conversation with a drone, or with a checkout person who is hurrying you through to deal with the next person in the queue.<\/p>\n

Choice: you\u2019re more likely to be able to buy that hard to find obscure item listed in the vintage pattern that you\u2019re finally getting around to stitching. And it\u2019s where you\u2019ll find something new, different, unusual, hand made.<\/p>\n

Variety: independent shops are more likely to carry a wider range of items, or niche products that the big shops don\u2019t. (When was the last time you bought 56 count hand dyed linen at a big box store? And when have you ever seen any colour of Aida but white or cream in a big store?) They respond to their customer\u2019s requests rather than the lowest common denominator (ie that sold well last week so we\u2019ll order more and ditch everything else, when what the customer really wants is not more of the same but something different).<\/p>\n

Buy what you need: eg, you may have some of the threads at home already and not want to be forced to buy a whole kit, or a whole packet of something when you want to buy some of the individual components. Eg, what if you want to buy 20 cms of Aida but you can only buy a pre cut package of 50 cms.<\/p>\n

Price: it\u2019s often assumed that independent shops are more expensive but it\u2019s so often not the case. They try to be as competitive as they can. They have to. Eg, Aida is so much cheaper in the independent shops, and cheaper still if you only want a small piece and don\u2019t want wastage.<\/p>\n

Quality: this matters to a lot of customers. They put a lot of time and effort into their projects so the quality of the ingredients need to reflect that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks for your valuable expertise, Michelle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we have a guest post from Michelle, who has worked at The Crewel Gobelin in Killara, Sydney for nearly 11 years. Michelle was one of my colleagues when I used to work there.<\/p>\n

Michelle wrote this as a comment on my recent post and has given me permission to repost. She wrote from an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embroidery-musings","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11192,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11191\/revisions\/11192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}