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.
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.
Over to Michelle:
“There are so many reasons to choose to buy from an independent shop rather than a big box store.
Service: a real person will serve you. You don’t have to hunt for it on the shelves, or have a drone collect it and send it.
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.
Advice: having trouble with your project? Not sure what needle to use, or thread? Or how to transfer your embroidery design?
Relationship: it’s 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.
Choice: you’re more likely to be able to buy that hard to find obscure item listed in the vintage pattern that you’re finally getting around to stitching. And it’s where you’ll find something new, different, unusual, hand made.
Variety: independent shops are more likely to carry a wider range of items, or niche products that the big shops don’t. (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’s requests rather than the lowest common denominator (ie that sold well last week so we’ll order more and ditch everything else, when what the customer really wants is not more of the same but something different).
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.
Price: it’s often assumed that independent shops are more expensive but it’s 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’t want wastage.
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.”
Thanks for your valuable expertise, Michelle.
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
If only there were more of them – the experience is so much pleasanter than the big stores, and you never know, you might encounter just the person with the expertise to help with whatever your current embroidery-related headache happens to be!
For those in the US, a big shout out to Needle in Haystack and Threadneedle Street. I’m on the other side of the US from these stores, so I’ve only used these places for mail order, but they are fantastic! Needle in a Haystack has *everything*. Threadneedle Street offers 18″ x 18″ and 11″ x 11″ cuts, which are great sizes for preventing wastage if you’re doing a square piece.
Whenever I suggest to people to support independent needlework stores, someone protests, “But I don’t have a LNS.”. I understand! NEITHER DO I! I never said it had to be local. Thank you for telling us why you love to support stores that are on the other side of the country.