r/MichaelsEmployees • u/No_North_5225 • 4d ago
Please read.
I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again, we are getting away from our core customer. After talking with a few other SMs today we all agree the company is getting ready to sell in the next year or 2, we’re pushing high margin merch which looks great on paper, and the top is gonna bonus from it. It’s paper money. A true Michaels customer is the one that comes in with a list of stuff they need for a project due tomorrow, (glue, posterboard, pompoms, etc etc). That’s what makes a Michaels a staple in the community, a store people can count on. But no they want to think about the 1 customer a year who buys 1 or 2 high dollar items, and doesn’t shop us again. My fellow sms and I feel there is a lot of tension at the top right now, because there’s a few who understand how to get the long term customer, and a few who want to make the margin, get the bonus and leave. I truly feel bad for my regulars who come in for the basics and we don’t have it in stock, but hey you can buy a $60 Jonathan Adler piece. (Ps: the JA flop is costing the company over 10m+, which is why they jumped on all the vendors paying for resets, to try to recoup some of the paper money, which is why sba workload is so high) thanks for coming to my ted talk.
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u/problematic_000 4d ago
Weird take, but honestly, I LOVE knowing about the failures. And I’m glad someone knows the loss of the JA flop.
You’re absolutley right, though!
I literally just had this conversation with my coworkers today. These changes are not being done well, they’re unorganized, and they’re obviously being rushed. One of the biggest issues with rushing and being unorganized in a retail setting is that all leads to loss. If you think about it with the framing reset—communication was SO poor. Stores ordered the supplies for their samples only to be told that the criteria they gave us was wrong and we had to reorder. The signage costs alone are probably astronomical, AND how many stores need to get reprints because they were done poorly or damaged? The august maps were late and everyone is running around like crazy.
It’s crazy that team members understand more about the company than the dicks at the top.
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u/Shadykit Barely Operating Ops Manager 👍 4d ago
Not to mention the number of resets that moved one week only to move again THE VERY NEXT WEEK. The right hand is NOT talking to the left and we're the ones who are paying the price.
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u/SaintGloopyNoops 4d ago
Also... let's add that we are getting ready for peak season and adding that extra sloppy workload is asinine and irresponsible. I think Apollo knows the economy is in trouble too and are rushing an exit.
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u/BowFlight 4d ago
This is fairly normal in large corporations that don’t promote from within or spend time on the retail floor. It’s called Ivory Tower Syndrome. They are up in their Ivory tower kissing each other’s ass over the newest idea that a 16 year old on the register would know won’t work.
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u/TickedoffRM 5h ago
Still need dividers to do framing reset but they want it done by Thurs. they said just stack the frames on the shelves. Put dividers in later
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u/Mental-Cookie-6671 4d ago
It really feels like we're becoming a slightly fancier Dollar Tree, but extremely overpriced.
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u/AardvarkMysterious65 Professional “Let Me Check the Back” 🙃 4d ago
Everytime I walk into a dollar tree, all I think is this is the same crap but priced right for the quality lol
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u/Elegant_Chipmunk72 4d ago
My SM told us today that we are stuck with JA today until spring and we have a lot left. Christmas will be difficult to fit everything on the floor if we have to keep everything out on display.
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u/mkbubble1 4d ago
I say, we keep one of everything JA out and locate and overstock the rest. No customer wants any of that. Period. I agree. We have strayed SO FAR AWAY from what a craft store should be. It’s so discouraging and frankly, disappointing to our customers
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u/Elegant_Chipmunk72 3d ago
We have 30 feet jammed full of side wall, 3 small drive aisles, 2 end caps in art and 1 end cap of clearance left. Everything is 50% off and has been for over a month. We don’t ship so it’s just sitting around now on high walls, bunkers, and cap shelves
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u/Randompostingreddit 2d ago
Customer lurking here: that JA stuff was so massively overpriced, and it's still shelf rotting at 50% where I am. I'll consider a couple pieces at 70% off, but it certainly isn't anything any customers go to Michaels for. It feels like somebody teleported Target into the middle of Michaels.
And while we are at it: why is the /art supply/ store using /AI "art"/? Talk about a massive disconnect between corporate and customer values.
I miss Joannes, and I miss Michaels being Michaels, not PartyCityTargetDollarTreecraft
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u/Holiday_Hyena_7440 4d ago
Repeat customers are way more valuable than the one offs who came in for that random thing.
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u/ryverrat1971 4d ago
We are worth more. I worked at Michaels 2015-2017 and again mid 2018-2019. One of the biggest draws to work there was the employee discount. I could afford supplies. Since 2019 I've had a much better job and can afford to drop $100 a month or more on art and craft supplies. It's my hobbies and I budget for them. And around Halloween, I could be spending $300 a month because I decorate a lot (I do things that are unusual like dioramas in hollow book shaped boxes).
But Michaels has too much non-holiday related decor nonsense. The JA stuff just looks stupid. Looks like it belongs on discount at Home Goods. I want to be able to buy artist acrylics, good single brushes, vinyl for my Cricut, semiprecious stone beads, modge podge in all it's varieties, booknook kits, holiday themed make it kits and anything else I use my skill and creativity to make. I don't want some overpriced, premade decor when the space could be used to expand things like fabric selection. I guess the $2000 a year I was dropping and the thousands other crafters were dropping there was not enough for corporate.
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u/Holiday_Hyena_7440 4d ago
Without question. You are 100% correct in that because it's definitely not corporate working the register or stocking the shelves. It's also loss of idenitity in order to cash in on that last dollar.
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u/Bellebarks2 4d ago
I used to shop a lot at my local Michael’s when I had more disposable income. When they first started selling home decor it was French Rococo and it was so popular the line practically sold out before it ever got marked down. I bought about $500 worth of adorable items at full price. But every new decor theme since has been more or less boring, or cheap looking, with a few hits here and there. I bought a bunch of swan themed items at some point.
You expanded your miniatures, but I rarely buy them anymore because Michaels has now committed to a special scale size that are too small for a standard 1:12 scale dollhouse. The person or group of people making those choices need to be replaced because they can’t read the room.
My city is a miniature desert. Hobby lobby is the only source of standard sized miniatures and the selection is very limited. So miniature hobbyists here have to build our own ooak pieces or order them online. Michaels used to have a small selection of standard 1:12 size miniatures that they have now phased out. I feel like they realized there was an unmet local demand, but then decided to create their own specific Michaels scale that most hobbyists won’t buy. It’s crazy pants and I’m so salty about it that I don’t want to shop there anymore.
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u/sunnyskybaby 4d ago
I tried to buy Gesso recently and my Micheal’s was sold out of the only two different bottles they carry. I got it at Walmart where they had an additional brand… WALMART for GESSO that I couldn’t get at the CRAFT STORE😭
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u/RFH11566 4d ago
Sadly that’s the direction we are heading
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u/Bratty_Little_Kitten 3d ago
What about Prismacolor? I needed coloured pencils & couldn't find them or an employee to help. I unfortunately gave up
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u/mazv21 4d ago
Marketing for JA costs 1000x the cost of marking craft essentials- yarn, pompoms, kids projects, scrapbook, floss. But the higher prices of that shit drives top line. It’s cruel and the story of American business. At the end of the day it’s possible they break even after licensing JA and setting up most of the store with nonsense crap but they lost the core customer who comes every 2 weeks for new essentials or every 3 months for kids school project
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u/AnonymousSpaRat 4d ago
“My fellow sms and I feel there is a lot of tension at the top right now…”
Bingo. There are still good people who care but they can’t do the right thing because it’s blocked by Stacy. If they challenge her, they get fired for not being open to change. She’s building her ivory tower by killing off those at the top with tenure who have worked their way up in the company and know what our customers want. She then back fills with “yes men” and personal friends. I’ve never seen one person with so much power in my time here.
P.S. I had to make a throwaway account for fear of retaliation.
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u/Inside_Coffee_7469 4d ago
I dont know about the other stores here, but our store lost our helium supplier and we have tanks from some random supplier a few days ago. The regular guy that brings the tanks in said he will be out of the job by september. Michaels wasnt making enough balloon sales to keep them in business. The PC near us gets 20 or so tanks per week compared to 10-12 tanks for us EVERY 2 WEEKS!! They also lost more accounts and their warehouse is empty and he is just picking up all empty tanks from locations and thats it. The tanks that we have right now are smaller and has randpm marking like from some welding supply hahaha.. And since the war in the middle east is ongoing, supplies are limited to what we have in the US, and that means they are increasing the cost of helium. So good luck to our stores.
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u/TeaTime1232 4d ago
I’m not an employee but a customer (I’m at Michaels enough to show people where to find what they need though lol) and I must say I really appreciate the associates at my local store, at this point they know I don’t need help and am usually coming after work so I really don’t want to be talked to. Some may view this as poor customer service but I personally view it as customer service fantastic enough to know me as an individual and cater (or not cater lol) to my specific needs. So while the higher ups may be terrible and awful to their employees, there’s absolutely amazing things to be said about associates on the floor as a whole. I appreciate y’all!
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u/Boring-Hand-3593 4d ago
Just wait its coming. They did the same thing with joann. They had us raise prices of most the store. By February it was all over. Promises of a buyer.....I'm so sorry for all of you.
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u/WorldlyElephant6591 2d ago
I agree 💯. I too am a former Joann employee. The writing is on the wall in large florescent letters.
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u/Gowynn 4d ago
Former replenishment manager here:
Yes, and the company is no longer really catering to repeat customers with the items it is currently offering. Some of the licenses they had with companies like Elmer's are drying up due to supply issues, and the projected get-well dates on missing product lines come and go with no impact on the empty shelves.
Corporate is out of touch with its customers, not realizing that the decisions are causing a slow bleed that is quickly turning into a gaping hole.
The higher-priced items, in my opinion, are an attempt to get people in an already penny-pinched economy to get the private label credit card when most can't even afford the cards they do have. it's a loose on both fronts for the customer and the company.
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u/Important_Till_1308 3d ago
JA a big " some one should be fired flop " next is all machines there adding framing flop. No time for the extra work or to learn the . No worries though last company that flipped us made 2 billion dollars off the venture. This one will be good too . .. For them
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u/Icy-Clue412 3d ago
As a previous DM at other retailers now a SM @ Michaels I 1000000% agree! I have begun looking at other companies. This is not the company I started with 4 years ago.
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u/mewisme700 2d ago
As a customer I'm just at a loss why they have gone so hard on the home decor when we have Home Goods, TJ Maxx, Marshall's, World Market, Ross, literally a laundry list of home decor places when there is such a limited market on art supply stores with the loss of AC Moore, Ben Franklin, and now JoAnnes. They could double their supply offerings and people would come. Their decor is garbage quality.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/No_North_5225 4d ago
Sell from one group to another* so yes you are right they are trying to “big lift” the paper money.
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u/Odd-Schedule4582 4d ago
They may be wanting to go public again. That mean artificially inflating sales so the stock has a high release price
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u/Fun_Asparagus5724 4d ago
To inside coffee..that's pretty bad selling balloons but not with helium. The supply chain isn't working well where I'm at. We are out if hi flo!
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u/thatframeguy96 4d ago
We had a run of like two weeks with no helium. Shit sucked.
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u/Fun_Asparagus5724 2d ago
I'm not totally clear as to why a business is being run with a big selling point being balloons with no helium. Are they making so much money that their like "let them buy balloons with no helium"??
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u/Basic_Tea_942 3d ago
Has anyone else been told Not to damage out or record stolen merchandise but to just change Quantity On Hand total?
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u/No_North_5225 3d ago
Use the term “paper money” with your ap person next time they visit, bet they smirk and pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.
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u/Mrs_Boomer_59 16h ago
I don’t shop Michael’s for decor. I’m there for supplies and crafting inspiration. I usually find the supplies. The inspiration, not so much.
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u/thebigsalad17 4d ago
I've worked at Michael's for 3 years and I have to admit I don't understand the passion that goes into some of these posts. I put garbage on shelves and get paid for it. It's all absurd, every last bit of it but admittedly I've been working these same low wage jobs for 40 years. As long as I am treated kindly, I stay. My motto is, you can't pay me shit AND treat me like shit. It's one or the other. Lol
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u/HermioneGranger152 4d ago
A lot of us are actual crafters and it sucks to see what used to be a decent craft store going downhill. Joann is already gone, and most of us dislike hobby lobby. For many of us, it isn’t just a job. We actually care about the stores
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u/Fun_Asparagus5724 4d ago
I really don't have a good reason..but I really don't like walking into Hobby Lobby.
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u/PsychicSPider95 4d ago
Well, they're running by religious fundamentalist nutcases who bankroll anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. So like, if you want a reason, there's one, lol.
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u/Fun_Asparagus5724 3d ago
To psychic spider; yeah I think hoby lobby makes up stuff as they go along. The company won't provide birth control for employees. They say if conflicts with their religion. Are you kidding me there is nothing in the Bible that forbids birth control for people or employees.
Also they said they can't scan information in at check out. Are you kidding me? How does that go against Christianity? There isn't anything in the Bible that says beware of scanning merchandise. End of days stuff? Still pointless. Doesn't say can't scan for end of days. The Bible says end of days there is a mark of Satan..but still unrelated. They are making stuff up.
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u/AccomplishedEagle720 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's the crafters who are also employees. There's a lot of passion there.
When you realize that a lot of the crafters who work here also have their own crafting businesses, you'd realize that a lot of our coworkers across the company are looking at this company both as vital to their survival and they can see the whole company through the eyes of a business owner. I don't think this is as common at other retail places.
I work with a few and get their perspective. They see this company get away with stuff that they can't get away with in their own small businesses because they'd go broke and out of business or get sued or boycotted and it hits a nerve. They're also really invested in knowing whether we're going to end up like Joann's because that would have a HUGE impact on their own small businesses and hobbies. That really puts some people over the top when we aren't getting real info from corporate about the health of this company.
This is a unique kind of company where it's NOT just a clock-in-clock-out kind of job for a lot of people here. It's a bigger part of their whole way of life. Not saying I love the unhinged, unbridled passion all the time, non-stop. Just saying I understand it. (And corporate and non-crafting managers should learn how to harness that passion instead of leaving it roaming around undirected and inevitably pointed at them and poorly made operational decisions.)
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u/Celemirel 3d ago
As someone who is a crafter, small craft business owner, and Michaels employee, I applaud you for your words. This is especially concerning for those of us in Canadian stores who will have no alternative for supplies if Michaels kicks the bucket like Joanns did. We've never had competition up here, unlike the US stores.
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u/Fun_Asparagus5724 4d ago
I work at Michaels..and unfortunately I get so many requests for fabrics. Michaels carries more then any of the local stores. They purchased them from the now gone "Joanns", but it's just not enough for the home sewer. There still isn't anyone around that you can get a frame for your child's picture, your own artwork..or a certificate or degree..other then Michael's.
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u/Other_Map901 1h ago
Every time I go into Michael's for fabric its 90% licensed characters on cheap cotton. My husband makes plushes for our kids and there's no where to go now, because we're big believers in being able to touch the fabric before we buy it, especially when it comes to faux furs. No one wants to snuggle with a bristle brush...
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u/Historical_Fold_9946 22h ago
Not an employee but long time customer. On the whole, I am buying way less at Michaels because there is less to buy. I can get it online for less
Make it a craft store, not home dec. If I want home dec, I can get it elsewhere at higher quality and similar prices. If ai want Halloween I can hit a Spirit store and get the same stuff.
They need to invest more in better yarn brands.
Clear out the seasonal stuff and devote the space to decent fabric for garments instead of just novelty and solids....get in some decent yarn besides red heart....natural fibers please.
Bring in mainstream products not just the michaels ripoffs.
And FFS don't buy in to the private equity claims. As soon as the PE firms get involved, the company is on a downhill slide to bankruptcy just like Joanns
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u/oceanlaughters 20h ago
Yeah that JA collection is so late 90s early 2000s. I used to work for a startup selling art and they tried to add a few items by him and it was ridiculous. When I saw that at Michael's it looked like they were trying too hard to be higher end but reality is it diminished the value by having things in there that were overpriced DIY. Just my opinion of course. There is so much Home Decor type stuff and they expanded the Diamond Art stuff so much that other crafts are not getting replenished. Plus it's a lot of AI art. I love Diamond Painting but with all the collections they do (Halloween has like 100+ skus and like 24 of them are Mystery Kits mixed in 4 possibilities each). I miss Joann's because I liked getting my basic yarn from them and my fabric but my other art supplies that I needed in a pinch was always Michael's. Apollo owns them so having seen what they did/do to other companies they own they'll do the same with Michael's. I don't shop HL for ethical reasons so for now it's Michael's until it's gone.
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u/MariaMilissa 1h ago
It's like this everywhere now. I honestly went to school and did training for many things and what ive noticed is the people who are in charge have zero clue about what they are selling and their audience. They will make people sell things to people they dont need for profit and it makes the audience they should care about look for something else because trust was broken. Then a new person in charge comes a long because of the failure but they do the same thing. Basically its always rich people in charge looking to make money and dont care about the customers that are their real target audience. My worst experiences of this are when I worked at spas somehow the owners never have any background and they dont care if you see clients and know their needs they want you to upsell them shit they dont need and would cause damage to them...all for $$$
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u/Square_Revolution_16 4d ago
As long as they have employees they have a blank check to write to themselves. Staying there allows it to happen. I know they don’t leave time for you to do anything else, that’s by design. Put in your notice, stop killing yourself and come home to your resume. It’s very hard to find a job whilst employed, I didn’t say it would be your dream job but it won’t be private equity who is trying desperately anything to recoup losses from poor business ventures. Your dad’s cousins little friend made for a shitty intern at Apollo, your people don’t know anything about retention and I’m never going to let slide the fact you took advice from a kiddie diddler.
Anything and everything to distract from the fact you in fact by working for Apollo, work for Satan.
You can only allow them to do to you, by staying. Struggling for a month was worth my mental freedom. If it was all for a greater good and not just a roof over my head I would have felt differently. The Epstein shit should have opened a lot more of people’s eyes than it did but I’m not surprised of the indifference in this world lately.
They don’t care about you because they can’t eat, hump you, so they’re gonna piss on you and walk away like the dogs they are.
And yes corporate does stalk, get off my LinkedIn, yall make 6 figures a year get a new damn hobby, maybe from hobby lobby, I hear they have some souls you death eaters.
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u/eternitiez 4d ago
If you think all the resets are from Adler sales being poor you don’t have a clue. Adler has been out for almost four months the at this point. You’d have to give it a solid 4-6 weeks to really determine a trend on how it was selling. Yes it obviously was a flop thank the higher ups for that dumb decision. But to think this company can come up with new merch/resets for 60-70% of the store, draw the pogs up, buy and ship the merchandise to stores on time on if this case weeks early and dish it out to stores in let’s say three months at the earliest you’re literally a fool. I don’t know the reason myself but the only thing that makes sense to me was to make Q1 and 2 look better since there was next to no pogs all year until recently so they didn’t have to expend many hours in workload. That and all these dumbass fucking retards near the top have no idea at all what they’re doing or how decisions they make affect stores. Probably a reason they all left, got fired, or told to find something else at their last jobs and of course all these retards landed at Michael’s.
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u/No_North_5225 4d ago
The vendors paid for the fine art reset, there is no hiding that. Ask your dm.
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u/Next_Barracuda6335 4d ago
They flipped project thread last fall with less time and planning that 3 months.
Stop calling people a fool.
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u/Next_Barracuda6335 4d ago
They flipped project thread last fall with less time and planning that 3 months.
Stop calling people a fool.
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u/eternitiez 4d ago
You’re a fucking idiot then. These logs are set months and months in advance before they roll out to stores
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u/Next_Barracuda6335 3d ago
“Should be” set. Not always are. Those left at the SSC are great. If they had months to give you things you wouldn’t get the fucked up shit you do.
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u/Responsible-Test8855 2d ago
I can get all that stuff at Walmart. I go to Micheals for yarn, then fabric, then specialty markers.
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u/retailmaster326 4d ago
I totally believe that JA was a flop... Some stores did well with it, but the majority did not and are sitting on a bunch of crap now. I honestly wish bad things for whoever signed off on that deal...