Website Closers® presents a thriving online business now recognized as a notable specialist in unique and attractive Quilt-Making Fabrics. The company enjoyed so much success on Etsy that it was able to expand sales channels to include its own Shopify website. With 10 years of experience attracting a loyal customer base, that website now dominates their sales, and revenues continue rising each year.
The company’s financial performance has been steadily increasing over the past few years. Having grown to 600+ fabrics and colorways that come from the most high-end fabric lines, the company has enjoyed heightened popularity with customers active in DIY, quilting and sewing hobbies, and their catalog is in high demand since a lot of retail stores don’t sell the fabrics this company offers.
Customer engagement has been instrumental in driving sales and increasing this brand’s profits. The company has nearly 15,000 5-star reviews on its Etsy platform. Additionally, it has attracted a loyal following on its Facebook page and is a member of a 100,000 member Facebook group for this particular brand of fabrics, where members share tips and photos of finished products using these particular fabrics from this popular brand. This has helped keep customers devoted to their products and coming back for more, which has helped deliver rapid growth to the Shopify website. This was accomplished with a minimal advertising spend, with their marketing getting a boost from the organic traffic generated from the brand’s social media and email marketing campaigns.
In addition to the quality of their SKUs, the company has cultivated a strong reputation for something else: customer service. Customers frequently rave about their fast shipping and how accessible the company is if any questions arise.
The company equally benefits from the fact that the textile industry has been soaring in the past few years. Demand for specialized fabrics by industries that include apparel, home furnishings, automotive designs, and health care have made this a $748 billion industry, projected to grow by nearly 8% through 2030. The sale of specialized fabrics has skyrocketed since the meteoric rise of eCommerce in the past few years, as the availability of unique products and the convenience of finding each fabric online has sent profits soaring.
The brand also fits in nicely with the booming arts and crafts market, appealing to customers who want the fabrics for their own home projects and have come to trust this brand for quality, rapid deliveries, and reliable service. Having grown so quickly in the past decade, the company is in just the right position to use new sales channels and an expanded digital marketing campaign to accelerate its growth and profitability.
The Company
Launched in October 2013, this company was a labor of love for its founder, who had a passion for specialized quilt-making fabrics. Initially launched on Etsy, the brand expanded to include quilt-making accessories including patterns. Their quilting fabric is typically solid in yardage.
From the start, this business specialized in fabrics designed by the Kaffe Fassett Collective, and they sell complete fabric kits for quilts, quilt-making patterns based on their designs, and those designed by commercial quilt designers.
The company has become popular with quilting hobbyists for selling “notions,” or tools that enable them to complete specific quilting tasks. Some of their quilt patterns and hobby kits were designed by this company and are manufactured directly for them.
The brand stands out in this field for its detailed knowledge of each product, a similarly in-depth understanding of what its customers are looking for and how it can meet their needs, and its sharp focus on customer service.
Their success in attracting customers on Etsy encouraged the brand to launch a Shopify site. In 2022, Etsy was still 75% of overall sales, and Shopify was a rising 20%. Within a year, those numbers had reversed, and their website is now getting the traffic it needs to keep sales rising higher.
With an Average Order Value of $50, sales benefit from seasonality since different products appeal to buyers over different times of the year. There are sales peaks in May and June, and then again around the holidays. Their catalog continues expanding, giving customers more options and the company more opportunities for upsells.
Many of their buyers are age 50 and older, including retirees who now focus on being quilters or collectors of fabrics. Many of them make repeat orders to complete a quilt project they are working on.
Marketing
With 6,000+ subscribers in the company’s email database, 4,600+ Facebook followers, and 2,500+ followers on Instagram, the company has become adept at using social media and email newsletters to generate higher levels of organic traffic and to expand its customer base.
This leaves plenty of other tools that a buyer could employ to quickly scale this business. The use of influencers on their social media accounts would provide a significant boost in sales, and so would launching the company’s first SEO program. Having the website fully optimized for industry keywords would boost its ranking in search engines, and the site could attract more customers by adding a blog that offers advice and tips to the quilt-making and fabrics-loving public.
There are additional opportunities to run PPC ads on Google to drive sales higher, and the company could expand its catalog even further by introducing fabrics from other designers, expanding its sale of accessories, and create new quilt patterns. These additions would be ideal for boosting upsells and improving the brand’s Repeat Customer Rate.
Operations
Products are sourced from a U.S. wholesaler with fabrics being produced in South Korea, which are shipped to customers from the company’s home studio. The company maintains a $75,000+ inventory to keep its 600+ designs and colorways well stocked for fast shipping.
No full or part-time employees are needed to maintain daily operations, which are handled by the current ownership, who focuses on fulfilling orders, creating fabric kits and patterns, managing inventory and handling customer service.
The company enjoys low overhead costs. Combined with their low marketing budget, the company has been able to enjoy rising year-over-year profits.
No special skills are needed to operate this company, but the buyer does inherit the brand’s loyal customer base, strong brand recognition, impressive recurring revenues, and excellent growth potential.
This Company is Represented by:
WebsiteClosers.com
Technology, Internet & eCommerce Business Brokers
WC 3257