My local had no idea what I was asking about. 
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I wish there were JoAnn up in Canada!
I think @deb1 means “Great… What good’s my laser business when folks can just go to the mall and use the laser kiosk to get their custom work done.”
And if that’s a correct interpretation, I definitely agree. Of course, there’s a lot more design work that can go into a great custom project. But for simple things (the low-effort, high margin custom jobs) I can definitely see where an in-mall laser kiosk cuts the little guy right out of the picture. People will literally impulse-laser as they walk through a mall. I imagine those jobs will end up rarely going to the small laser owner.
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So they manage to deliver PG-materials to physical shops, yet we had no news for more than a year on international PG deliveries? I still have around 250$ in credit which is of absolutely no use to me… I’d like them to sort this out, especially since they can obviously deliver the stuff abroad - I got my samples pack almost a year ago! What’s the holdup, @dan?
Exactly Tom, Investing in this laser was definitely, for me any way, an effort to grow a component of my business and now that anyone can walk into a Joanns it makes it so much easier for them to violate copyrights etc. I can’t imagine that the employees at Joanns truly know the difference and so on…
Granted I have enough talent (I used to design products for the giftware industry) that I am not exceedingly worried but it does make it less “exclusive”…and here I thought my competition was just going to be from my fellow quilt designers…
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People could have walked into a maker shop and done this long before the GF came out. Or sent files to ponoko. I don’t see this making a big dent that a couple of Joanne’s have one.
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I agree here. People who could get their work done or wanted to copy others would have figured this out already. Also, experience comes into play. I learned most ofthe general public wants to do level 10 projects when they are level 1 newbies for free or so no money. I wouldn’t want those customers anyway.
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Same thing happened when desktop printers first came out. Remember the truly hideous outlined and shaded fonts on newsletters? (I might have been guilty of this at one time)
Sure. But “people” don’t. CERTAIN people do. But millions of people walk into malls every day.
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i guess so? i mean, eventually all these kinds of things become more mainstream. anyone can buy adobe illustrator, but most people can’t make anything useful with it. just having access to a GF in a mall doesn’t mean you can make anything nice with it. a few joanne’s is pretty small peanuts in the big picture.
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I totally agree with this. And, I’m betting at least 90% of what gets made on a GF in a mall is going to be real crêpe 
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Exactly. As I said on the FB version of this topic:
It’s a tool. Anyone in the public can, in general, get access to pretty much any tool that any craftsman uses. Museums aren’t going out of business because just anybody can go to the store and buy themselves a set of oil paints, or a pottery wheel, or a router. The distinction is the skill and creativity of the person USING the tool. If you’re depending on having a tool no one else has to set you apart, rather than applying your creativity to its use, you’re not an artisan; you’re just a person with a cool tool.
Be an artisan.
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THIS!
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Exactly! Funny thing - I’ve showed my kids, all whom have various interests in art, crafting, building, how to use the GF (safely of course!) and each of them had gone “cool” but then asked me to create their object for them because of the care, time and crafting I put into making their things. I have 25+ years of WW experience, and that comes through when designing boxes or joints or whatever I’m trying to do; that experience shines through in my products vs theirs. But I constantly tell them they CAN do it, and many times I’ll educate and help them with the process because I want them to learn and do it so they can become experienced, but they see what exp can do for them. Hell the stuff I made 25 years ago was crap! The stuff I make now might still be crap, but it’s better looking crap! 
(Actually I have made a few pieces I’m proud of!)
And I get the other argument as well. I had a good friend invest in about $100k worth of really really nice WWing tools about 15 years ago (he made a crap ton of money in the 90’s around tech) and start a business making high end furniture. His stuff was amazing and while he could find clients, most people looked and said “sure it’s nice, but I can go to American Furniture Warehouse and buy the same thing for 1/4 the cost”. Granted the AMF stuff didn’t have hand cut dovetail joints and wasn’t made out of solid walnut and would last for the next 200 years, they in essence were right - commodity won. After a couple of years he went back to work in tech and still makes furniture to this day, but mainly for friends, family, etc. His stuff is still amazing, beautiful and everyone wants a piece from him as it’s an “original”.
They’ll always be those stories, but to say that now because one small (relatively in the retail space) retailer is carrying GF’s that your business will suffer, sure it might. But at the end of the day it’s YOU they’re buying, not just the trinkets you spit out.
So yes, be an ARTISAN!
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