With Joann going out of business, nimble local craft stores are ready to capture younger DIYers
Amy Craft Ahrens had a strong sense that Joann, the iconic crafts and fabrics chain that had been around for decades, might be on its last gasp.
She was already thinking ahead, as recently as last week, about how her own quilt and yarn shop in downtown Bowling Green, Ohio, could become a source of comfort for Joann shoppers if the retailer went completely out of business.
In early January, Joann filed for bankruptcy for the second time within a year. More bad news followed when the retailer announced on Feb. 12 that it would shutter 500 of its 800 stores nationwide.
Loyal shoppers, several of whom regularly relied on their neighborhood Joann store for stocking up on supplies for their homegrown quilt, knitting and crochet products businesses expressed their anxiety, fear and despair on social media and elsewhere.
“Joann’s closing hurts because the next nearest yarn shop is an hour away. I loved their store brand yarn the most and I had originally planned to buy it online. But now that they are closing I will have to find a new favorite yarn, which can change all of my patterns,” one Etsy seller, whose shop Crochet The Holidays sells handmade crochet creations, said in a comment to Bagable.com.
Craft Ahrens last week shared a personal message on Facebook offering support. Her post read:
“In recent days, many of you have heard about the Joann stores closing, including the one in Findlay. We understand this is a challenging time, especially for employees who have dedicated years to the company. Our thoughts are with them as they navigate this transition,” she wrote.
“We would like to invite everyone who was a regular Joann shopper to come to The Busy Thimble in downtown Bowling Green, Ohio, to see all we have to offer you,” she said in the post. “We’re more than just a place to buy fabric, yarn and notions—we’re a community of quilters and crafters who share your passion.”
She enumerated why Joann shoppers would love shopping at her store, promising they would enjoy a curated selection of fabrics, personalized customer service and a supportive community of “like-minded crafters in a welcoming, friendly environment.”
In addition to The Busy Thimble quilt and yarn shop, Craft Ahrens helps run two of her other family businesses. One is Ben’s (which offers everything from custom framing and to art supplies and candy) and a gift shop called For Keeps, both in downtown Bowling Green.
Speculation about Joann’s future came to an end this week when the company finally announced that after 80 years, it was going out of business.
Craft Ahrens isn’t surprised by Joann’s demise. “I think it’s emblematic of a situation in retail in general where some of these big box stores haven’t been able to make the adjustments they need to meet their customers where they are and they’re struggling,” she said in an interview with Bagable.com.
“It’s one thing that I love about small business, that we can be nimble and change on a dime,” she said. The problems at Joann, she suspects, stemmed from a mix of setbacks, including merchandise that didn’t appeal to customers.
“In crafting, trends come and go in terms of their popularity. As a crafts store, you have to keep pace with this,” she said.
Running out of oxygen
Crafting saw a surge in demand during the pandemic as more families, and especially younger people, took up activities such as sewing, knitting, crochet, face mask making, baking and cross stitching through the lockdown.
This spike in creative fervor was both a boom and a challenge for materials suppliers, many of whom struggled to stay fully in stock amid the sudden demand spike for sewing machines, fabric, yarn and other products.
Heading into the pandemic, Joann was struggling with declining sales and rising debt as competitors Michaels, Hobby Lobby and online competitors with better variety and prices gained market share at its expense.
But the pandemic provided the retailer a brief respite from its financial woes as it saw both sales and shopper traffic pick up because of a resurgence in do-it-yourself activities.
Just a few years later, however, Joann could not hold on to the pandemic-time momentum and suffered through a difficult year in 2023, had no CEO for a year and filed for bankruptcy in 2024. It never really recovered after that.
“With a mountain of debt and a brand that has become increasingly broken, the pathways for survival simply closed for Joann,” Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData Retail, told Bagable.com. “The company has had sales issues, not least because a lack of inventory created out of stocks and gaps in assortments. This weakened its specialist status in the fabric and textiles space and caused customer defections.”
The path forward for the legacy retailer is very uncertain, he said. “This is not really the type of environment in which companies, including other retailers, want to take a risk by trying to turnaround the company,” Saunders said. “This is sad news for many crafters, especially in the textiles space, as many were loyal to Joann.”
Julie Craig, a retail expert and vice president of shopper insights with Kantar Retail, said retailers also have to get sharper at responding quickly to shifting consumer demographics if they want to remain successful.
“It's so fascinating to see how the trends from deep in the pandemic play out in the post-pandemic era,” she said. “Younger Millennials and Gen Z do love crafting. However, Gen Z, in particular, is thrifty and felt that retailers like Target, Amazon and Walmart offered them better value in terms of prices, deals, convenience and delivery of their purchases.”
Specialty retailers, such as Joann, have struggled to communicate meaningful differences in their assortment, quality and service that would justify their higher prices, she added.
“Younger shoppers’ loyalty is 100% up for grabs and they are willing to switch around among retailers and brands to get the best overall value,” Craig said.
“Any closing in the crafts industry is sad”
At SEAMS Sewing & Mercantile, a Michigan-based full-service fabric retailer and sewing machine dealer with two stores, GenZers and customers as young as 10 years old are streaming in regularly.
“I would say at least 30% or more are Gen Z and probably 25% of our customers overall are men,” said Amber Adams-Fall, a store manager at the SEAMS Sewing & Mercantile store in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The small business also has a store in East Lansing, Michigan.
“We’ve been seeing this trend for a few years and it’s growing,” she said. “I think the coming of YouTube within the past decade has really made a huge difference. It's getting craft tutorials and ideas out to a greater number of people. We’re definitely seeing a big rise in interest in sewing, crafts and fiber arts.”
Sewing is especially popular with young customers, so much so that the small business offers on-site sewing classes for beginners.
“A lot of sewing classes at retailers, big or small, tend to be project based. You go to a class and you make an object and you take it home with you. And that's great,” Adams-Fall said. “But what's missing in our industry is somebody sitting down with you and teaching you the very basics, like how to use a sewing machine.”
The beginner’s group “is almost always a full class at both of our locations,” she said, “and we see really good retention with those students coming back to us pretty rapidly to start their second project.”
For Adams-Fall and Jessy Gregg, owner of SEAMS Sewing & Mercantile, the end of Joann isn’t a complete surprise. But it is a disappointment.
“We’re getting customers all the time who had purchased their fabric and their pattern, or even their sewing machine from Joann and had not been able to get support there,” Adams-Fall said. “When you try to make everything cheaper and cheaper, you lose quality and then eventually, you can’t even make enough profit to sustain a business over time.”
Gregg agreed. “Any closing in the crafts industry is going to be sad. But honestly, we were already seeing overflow from Joann’s because they were selling products that they couldn’t support.”
As Joann now prepares to unwind its operations and shutter stores, Gregg is worried the process could temporarily hit her business.
“It makes me somewhat nervous as a retailer to know that there are 800 Joann stores with discounted merchandise that’s about to be available to my customers,” Gregg said.
“It might be a little bit rough for us independent crafts stores for the next 18 months,” she said. “Hopefully, those customers will find that they get better service with smaller stores and we are more tailored to be able to adapt to their needs in a way that Joann stores were never able to.”