When you have a handful of regular customers in your quilt store, remembering their preferences feels natural. But what about when you’re juggling fifty regulars? A few hundred?
Without the right systems in place, personal details like which customers love reproduction prints and which ones are bulk-buying to make charity quilts can fall through the cracks. And when you forget those details, you’re missing out on an opportunity to provide a great customer experience and, ultimately, the opportunity to bring in more revenue.
Customer purchase history turns those scattered mental notes into a reliable system. Instead of relying on memory alone, you can track preferences, buying patterns, and project cycles for every customer who walks through your door.
This post outlines the best practices for using quilt store data to improve customer service and increase sales over time.
Fabric stores have a unique opportunity when it comes to customer purchase history. You can examine what they buy, when they buy, and what they’re likely to need next.
Related Read: 24 Key Retail KPIs To Track in Your Fabric Shop
The data points that matter most for quilt shops are:
Modern point of sale (POS) systems built for fabric stores (like Like Sew) capture these details automatically as customers shop. Let’s dive into ways you can use this data to keep customers coming back.
Most quilters work on a predictable timeline.
A casual hobbyist making a lap quilt might take six months to complete, whereas a serious quilter can finish the same project in six weeks. Your customer purchase history will reveal these natural rhythms, showing you when customers are likely ready to start shopping for fabric for their next project.
If a customer bought backing fabric last month, they might now be finishing up and starting to think about what’s next. That’s your window to reach out with new arrivals or some other project inspiration materials.
This type of proactive outreach works well because it shows customers you’re paying attention and care about their projects, and it reduces the likelihood that they’ll shop around for better prices.
Pro Tip: Invest in a point of sale solution with built-in marketing and email messaging. You can then track major purchases and segment your contact lists based on actual purchase patterns.
Ordering new fabric lines is one of your biggest expenses. Without customer purchase history data, you’re committing thousands of dollars based on industry trends, vendor recommendations, and gut instinct.
Purchase history helps you make more strategic inventory management decisions. Instead of wondering what will sell, you can analyze what’s already selling and double down on what works.
Some data points to consider when making your stocking decisions:
If a significant portion of your customers regularly buy a specific designer, prioritizing that designer's new releases becomes an obvious choice. When you invest in what your community actually wants, you offer a better customer experience while also reducing dead stock.
Related Read: Retail Vendor Management: 7 Helpful Tips for Quilt Shops
Guild relationships and collaborating with local crafters can make or break a quilt store's success. These customers often buy in larger quantities, shop more regularly, and bring friends along for the ride.
The challenge is identifying who's part of a guild or buying group versus who's shopping for personal projects.
Purchase history helps you see the telltale signs of guild and bulk buyers.
Once you've identified these customers, you can create targeted programs for them. Consider bulk discounts for identified guild buyers, advance notice when guild-appropriate fabrics arrive, or exclusive perks for group leaders.
If you’re offering classes in your quilt shop, you need to take full advantage of that audience and their purchasing data.
Purchase history helps you track which students convert into regular customers and which ones slip away. You can see who buys kits versus individual supplies, the timeline between class enrollment and supply purchases, and which students never purchase beyond their initial class materials.
Related Read: Run Fabric Classes In-Store in 7 Simple Steps
Once you’ve identified patterns and opportunities, you can implement different strategies to improve conversion:
When you have the right data and make strategic class and discount decisions, you can more easily and reliably turn your class signups into your most loyal customers.
Generic promotional emails get ignored or, worse, flagged as spam. Today’s customers expect personalization, and when you’re tracking customer purchase history, you can deliver on that expectation.
Segment customers by their purchase preferences, then build customized marketing campaigns designed to speak to the individual needs and interests of each segment.
The timing matters as much as the message. Base your communication on purchase cycles, not arbitrary email schedules. If someone shops every four to five months, don't email them weekly — that’s another way to get sent to the spam folder.
This approach works because it feels personal, even though it's automated. Customer preference tags and segmented marketing make it possible to treat each customer as an individual without emailing each one.
Related Read: 5 Inspiring Email Newsletter Ideas for Quilt Stores
We love all our loyal customers, but they’re not all created equal. The customer who spends $50 every few months and the one who drops $200 monthly both shop regularly, but they have vastly different impacts on your bottom line.
Purchase history reveals the full picture of customer value beyond just frequency. You can see average transaction size, long-term customer lifetime value, and product mix. This data should shape how you structure your store’s loyalty rewards.
Design rewards that match customer behavior:
When you analyze customer value this way, you can properly recognize the customers who are true VIPs in your store. Those customers will then feel appropriately appreciated, and are more likely to bring friends, leave positive reviews, and keep shopping in your store.
Finally, you can use customer purchase history to better plan for seasonal inventory ordering. Quilting, in general, follows predictable rhythms, but those patterns can vary by community. What works for a shop in one market might not match the patterns in another area.
The only way to truly understand your seasonal cycles is to look at your own purchase history data.
You’ll want to collect customer purchase data to see when your community of quilters tends to run charity projects or ramp up for the holiday gift-making season.
Once you have this data, you can use it to be more strategic about your inventory and operations:
Seasonal buying reports and year-over-year comparisons help you spot trends and anomalies in your specific market. Remember that local quilt shows, county fairs, and community events can all impact sales and traffic in your store.
Customer purchase history is the key you need to turn those scattered Post-It notes and mental thoughts into a system you can actually use to create reliable strategies for your store.
The best fabric store owners have always known their customers deeply. Using technology to support these efforts doesn’t take away the personal touch; instead, it helps you scale it, giving your customers the experience they’ve always loved from independent quilt shops like yours.
But if you want to get the most from your customer purchase history, you need the right tools. Like Sew offers an all-in-one point of sale system that puts your customer purchase history to work. Our solution is designed specifically for quilt and fabric stores, giving you all the tools and features you need to succeed.
Ready to transform how you serve your quilting community? Build and price your ideal POS solution with Like Sew today.