Building Community Around Your Quilt Shop Business

The best quilt shops are more than retail stores — they’re gathering places.

As the owner of a quilt shop, you can take intentional steps to build a community around your business. Hosting in-person events, collaborating with quilting groups, and creating a presence on social media are all ways to engage your customers beyond simply making a purchase.

As people spend more time at your quilt store, their brand loyalty increases, making them more likely to choose your store the next time they need quilt supplies. They’ll also tell their friends about your business, helping to grow your customer base.

In this blog, we’ll explore six ideas for building a community of customers around your quilt shop business.

Let’s get started.

1. Focus on Exceptional Customer Service

The first step to building community is great customer service. Greet customers warmly and be ready to answer questions. When they make a purchase, ask what they’re working on and offer suggestions if you can.

Train your staff to provide helpful service, too. Make sure they can explain different fabric types and recommend products for future projects. Offering valuable insights and showing genuine interest in customers’ work builds trust with them, which leads to brand loyalty.

Setting clear policies from the start improves customer service. For example, writing out your return policy in advance prevents you from making decisions on the spot. 

You might decide that cut fabric is nonreturnable, while other unused supplies can be returned within a set time frame. Be sure to communicate these policies to all employees so there’s no confusion.

2. Host Quilting Workshops

Hosting classes and workshops brings people into your quilt store and helps them connect with other customers. You can teach classes yourself or invite guest instructors to demonstrate quilting techniques and guide students through popular projects. 

Try offering different classes for varying skill levels so you can appeal to a wider range of customers. While you may have favorite projects you’d like to showcase, simpler ones may be more accessible for beginners, and trending designs might generate more excitement among attendees. Find the sweet spot between what you love to teach and what your customers are eager to learn.

Managing the administrative side of these classes can quickly get complicated, but modern digital tools are designed to help. Some point of sale (POS) systems offer features to handle class registration, so you can: 

• Set the class size. 
• Accept a limited number of registrations. 
• Take payment. 

These systems also allow you to send reminders about upcoming classes and follow up with a thank-you note afterward.

Attendees are often willing to pay a small fee for a class, especially if supplies are included in the registration. If they need additional materials, they’re likely to purchase them from your quilt store.

You may need to rearrange your store to prepare for teaching a class. The more space you have, the more attendees you can sign up — resulting in greater revenue and stronger community connections.

Related Read: How To Start a Quilting Club in Your Fabric Store

3. Collaborate With Quilting Guilds

Quilting guilds are groups of quilters who meet regularly for education, show-and-tell, retreats, and quilt shows. They’re usually nonprofit organizations with elected leaders, rules, and membership fees.

If your quilt store has space for large gatherings, quilting guilds may want to book it for meetings and classes. They may also want to buy supplies from you. Working with them can be great for your business, but if you work with multiple groups, be careful not to show favoritism.

If multiple guilds want to use classrooms, keep a calendar and reserve them on a first-come, first-served basis. If groups want to purchase products, you can offer them a bulk discount. Give the same rates to all groups to maintain positive relationships with each one.

4. Build a Following on Social Media

Setting up social media channels for your quilt shop expands your potential audience, helping you reach both current and prospective customers. Create profiles on popular sites like Instagram and Facebook. These are great places to showcase your products and give people a feel for what your quilt store is like.

Now sure what to post? Here are a few ideas:

• New arrivals
• Top sellers
• Challenges
• Giveaways
• Customer projects

Customers love interacting with their favorite brands on social media. Try asking them to post their quilt projects and tag your store. Repost these on your story and shout them out. When you can, respond to comments and direct messages.

Social media is also a convenient option for collaborating with other individuals and businesses. If there’s a local influencer or a similar business, you could team up on a few posts and promote a product giveaway together. This kind of collaboration is called cross-promotion — but really, it’s just a fun way to grow your audience.

Related Read: Content Marketing for Small Business: 4 Strategies for Sewing Stores

5. Send Out Email Newsletters

An email newsletter is a great way to inform your customers and keep your business top of mind.

Here are some common topics to cover in a quilt shop newsletter:

• Store updates
• New products
• Upcoming events
• Trends in the quilting industry

Decide how often you want to send out your newsletter based on how often you have updates to share. Once a month is a common schedule for retail stores. In each newsletter, include calls to action — like inviting customers to try a new product or sign up for an in-person event.

Got a fresh shipment of popular fabric? Stocking new quilting notions? Hosting a class based on a trending project? These are perfect updates to include in your newsletter.

Place a QR code at the checkout counter and invite customers to sign up for your newsletter if they’re interested. You can also promote it on social media with a link and a brief mention of what subscribers get.

Related Read: 5 Inspiring Email Newsletter Ideas for Quilt Stores

6. Launch a Loyalty Program

Loyalty programs build community by encouraging customers to choose your quilt store for their quilting needs instead of a competitor. These programs are most effective when they’re easy to understand and use.

Loyalty programs reward customers for repeat visits, often based on points, tiers, or dollars spent. While keeping track of rewards may seem like a lot of work, POS systems make managing these programs easier. For example, if you choose points, many software platforms can record them and notify customers when they’ve earned a reward.

These perks may come in the form of free or exclusive products, discounts, or store credit. You might offer customers free fabric, thread, or patterns as rewards.

Remember: Promote your loyalty program in person at your quilt store and online. Invite customers to join at the register, and inform your followers about the program on social media.

Create a Community of Quilters With Like Sew

Creating a community of customers around your quilt store is key to keeping it successful. To get started, focus on friendly customer service and host events in your shop. 

You can expand your efforts by collaborating with quilting groups, building a following on social media, and sending out email newsletters. A loyalty program helps motivate your customers to return again and again, further solidifying your quilt store’s community.

Naturally, each of these strategies takes time and effort. As a business owner, you might feel you don’t have the bandwidth to build community methodically. Luckily, modern digital tools are designed to make this process easier.

Like Sew is a cloud-based POS solution developed specifically for quilt stores. Our all-in-one system offers many features to help build community. It includes class management tools for handling registration and payments, loyalty program capabilities, and sales reporting functionality so you can measure the effectiveness of your strategies.

The software is also equipped with a variety of quilt-specific capabilities, such as fabric vendor catalogs and fractional yardage price calculation. This complements standard retail functions like payment processing, inventory management, and e-commerce.

At Like Sew, we want to set you up with all the features you need. Try our Build and Price tool to see what version of our software is the best fit for your business!