How Jerry Peterson Added Longarm Quilting to a Quilt Shop After 21 Years

0:00 Our guest today, we have, is Jerry Peterson.

0:28 Jerry, we're glad to have you here joining with us today, and let's just start out. Can you tell

0:34 us, tell me and the audience that's watching, where are you located? Where's home for you?

0:41 California, in a town called Thousand Oaks, just outside of Los Angeles.

0:50 Okay, and we won't hold that against you being a Californian. Thank you.

0:57 Just kidding. So, tell us a little bit about your business that you have,

1:06 and how it got started, and just kind of tell us your story with your business.

1:12 Sure, I'd be happy to. Just to give people maybe a little bit of a heads up,

1:19 this isn't really a long-arm business until very recently, so I'm going to go back in time. We're

1:23 really a quilt store that is doing long-arming, and that's a recent development, but I'm happy to

1:29 share that part with you. But we go back 21 years, actually. We purchased a quilt store for

1:39 a very small amount of money. A gal was going out of business in our area in 2004,

1:46 and we, my wife had been a quilter for maybe 10 years, and we just thought, well, this is

1:52 something she really enjoyed. Maybe, you know, we kind of wanted to have that business. So,

1:56 we took it on as a side business. We both had regular full-time career jobs, and so we laid

2:04 out a little business plan and said, well, you know, let's see if we can make a go of this. Maybe

2:09 in about five years or so, one of us could retire and work the store, and the other will keep going,

2:14 and, you know, we'll see how it goes. And so, we started with 800 bolts of fabric and grew our

2:21 business. After about five, six years, we moved to a larger location, and then after another 10

2:30 years, we moved to yet another location that's even bigger. And so, we've grown very well. We

2:35 now have well over 3,000 bolts of fabric, and that's kind of a metric that we use for measuring

2:41 quilt store size. And we have added a large room that we use for sewing retreats, and so

2:49 it's a pretty vibrant store. It's very well known. For those in the quilting business,

2:55 there was a magazine called Quilt Sampler that featured the top 10 stores in North America twice

3:01 a year, and we were featured in that magazine not once, but twice, once in 2012, once in 2022.

3:10 And the quilt we designed for the magazine was on the cover both times. No other store had ever

3:15 done that. And what's the name of your store? Pardon me? What's the name of your store? Oh,

3:21 you'll like that. A lot of people like it. It's called Cotton and Chocolate Quilt Company,

3:26 and everybody goes, what's with the chocolate? And we go, quilters love chocolate, you know.

3:32 And honestly, it kind of came about because when you're hunting for a website name,

3:38 even back in the day, everything quilt-related was taken, you know, cotton this, that,

3:43 and somehow it came up, and it stuck, and it's a memorable name, and it's just been

3:48 terrific for us. So, here we are in our 21st year, and we just renewed our lease for another

3:56 five years, so we're still hanging in there and going. Okay, so let me get this straight.

4:03 This quilt shop that you've had, Cotton and Chocolate Quilts, I love that, by the way,

4:09 thank you, you have not had a long arm in all this time, up until fairly recently, is that correct?

4:19 January, the very first week in January, we bought a used machine from a local quilter that

4:27 was retiring, and moved it like three miles, moved it to our shop, and there it is, and

4:35 we've trained, I'd say, about five of us on staff now to be able to handle. We only do edge-to-edge,

4:43 we're not doing custom at this time, there's always room for growth in that, but there's

4:50 plenty of business in long arming in our area. Ever since we opened up and started taking quilts,

4:56 we've had a backlog of anywhere from 10 to 15, constantly, and just by the time we get them

5:03 out the door, there's new ones coming in, so we're not hurting for that at all, so it's been

5:09 been great so far. So, what machine did you get, what type of gamel did you get?

5:17 It's called, what's it called, an Optimum 30-inch, and it's about, I think it's 12 feet

5:27 long, we can do pretty big quilts. It was interesting, the gal who had that machine before

5:33 could only take quilts up to about 96 inches, and we never understood why, until I went to her

5:38 house, and she had it in her bedroom, and the computer monitor that's on the swivel couldn't

5:44 move out of the way, so she couldn't take a longer quilt. So, when we installed it, of course, we made

5:51 more room, and we can do the bigger quilts now. It was pretty funny. Nice, nice. So, you have an

5:57 Optimum Statler, the computerized version, right? Yeah, so we only do edge-to-edge, and

6:07 we follow the steps, and it works like a champ. It's been good. So, you're on the

6:13 Quilting Business Success podcast here, and you have about four months of experience on a gamel,

6:20 is that right? Well, as a store, yes, and as, yeah, exactly. I know, thank you. We will be

6:28 successful at this business, I'll guarantee you that. Oh, that's great. So, do you have a

6:36 impression of the machine so far? Is it primarily the people that work for you that are

6:42 operating it, or are you operating it? It's primarily staff that work for me. We're not

6:47 renting it out. It's primarily a business decision. The more quilts that we can do as a

6:52 store, the more revenue we'll generate. So, renting it out and having people who don't know what

6:58 they're doing mess up and stuff, it's just not where we want to go, at least not now, not maybe

7:04 not for quite a while. Yes, well, I will tell you, I work in tech support here at gamel, and

7:12 some of the most frequent fliers, I call them, that call are people that do the thing that you're

7:18 talking about. They rent the machine out for other people to use that don't really know what they're

7:25 doing, and there's frequently things being broken or stuff like that. So, probably a smart decision.

7:33 Yeah, I mean, we weren't without pitfalls starting. We learned, but it was mostly

7:38 process mistakes, and we learned how to recover from them, and that was all good learning, and

7:45 the gal we bought it from was super nice. If we needed her, we just called her, and she just

7:49 drove over and helped us out. So, we all got on our feet pretty quick. Excellent, excellent, and

7:56 if you have not already, I would recommend to you, and also the people watching, FYI, the people that

8:02 watch this podcast are primarily people that are either thinking about or are in a quilting

8:10 business, and one of the things that I recommend, if you don't already have it, is the

8:18 new owner training, if you're kind of new to the machine, and that new owner training is,

8:25 I've received rave reviews from everybody that's trying to, you'll have it, you can purchase that,

8:31 and for a lifetime, you'll have those videos that show you step by step how to do all the

8:37 basic operations of that. So, you have taken over cotton and chocolate. How long ago did you,

8:49 did you start running this? 2004. 2004, and what is your, what's been your favorite part

9:01 about running a quilt shop? It's interesting. I really enjoy interacting with customers. I mean,

9:10 I've done some summer jobs in my youth in retail and stuff, and I always liked interacting with

9:16 customers, and quilters are just special people. They're generally very nice people, and I just

9:24 love them, and after this many years, our regular customers are our friends, and they're just our

9:30 personal friends. I mean, we know everybody by name, and you know, it's a really nice business

9:36 to have, and it would be tough to let go of just because of that, you know. Right, right.

9:45 Well, I have one person who's asking a question on here. Sure. However, this might be a

9:51 question for me to answer. How many pantographs came with your machine, and have you added any

9:57 in your first four months? With your machine, you have a computerized, so it won't be

10:03 quote pantographs. It'll be patterns that are stitched on there, and I believe when you

10:10 first register your machine onto your account, you get around 1,200 or so free patterns on there.

10:18 You're not sure? Yeah. It's around 1,200 that you get on there, and do you know if you

10:26 guys have been purchasing any new patterns since you've been going? We go to a third

10:32 party and buy some patterns, and it's been pretty successful, too, so that's another

10:40 way to build up your patterns. I wouldn't mention the company unless you want me to, but

10:46 yeah. Oh, you certainly can. That's fine. We use a lot of our customers like

10:53 Ambright, so we go to Ambright Designs, and they just give me the name, and I have an account

10:58 for them, and I can download it, buy it, throw it on the machine. Works great. Yes, and I will

11:05 tell everybody who's watching, when you have the latest version of Creative Studio, the 754,

11:12 and you're signed on to the pattern cloud account, if something were to ever happen to

11:18 your computer where all your patterns on there get fried or something, all your patterns are

11:25 still saved in your pattern cloud account, and I've actually seen it happen several times before,

11:31 so that's a good thing. So, hopefully, that answers your question, Lisa.

11:38 Let me move on here. So, in the 20-some years that you've been doing the

11:47 quilt shop, how do you keep things, like, fresh and exciting for your customers after

11:52 all this time that you've been doing it? That can be a challenge because a lot of stores you

11:59 walk into, and they just feel the same all the time, and it's really nice. We get a lot of

12:04 compliments, so when people come in our store, it always seems as new and fresh. For us, it has a

12:11 lot to do with hanging quilts up that reflect the season and moving the seasonal fabric towards

12:20 the front of the store, so when you walk into the front of the store, you're presented with

12:25 either the brand-new fabric that's been coming in or the seasonal fabric that's going on at the time.

12:31 We'll have quilts hanging right above that. Most of our quilts are kits that we have designed

12:39 and made, and so it gives the store a very nice look from the outside going in.

12:48 We have some videos. If anybody's curious, we do post videos of our store. As a matter of fact, my wife

12:55 and I just did a video Sunday that I should be posting tonight after this podcast. We have a

13:02 YouTube channel that people can follow, and I'll be posting it on our YouTube channel via

13:08 a link on our website. If you're walking around the store, you can get a good chance to

13:13 get a view of that. That would be a good way to see it. What is that YouTube channel?

13:19 It's just cotton and chocolate without an ampersand. You spell it all out, and you can find it.

13:27 At the end of this podcast, I'll try to remind you. We'll get you to put out

13:34 your information, how people can get in touch with you and see what you have.

13:42 You have this Gammill machine. How did that come about? Did a person

13:52 have one available, and did you know anything about Gammill prior to purchasing this one?

13:58 Yes, very much so. My wife and I used to vend at quilt shows. We've been to many of the large

14:07 shows. Road to California is one of the bigger ones on the West Coast. We've been to Houston,

14:11 etc. We were very familiar with seeing them at the shows when you guys were doing shows,

14:19 and your brand and other brands. We weren't really in a market for them. We'd see them

14:24 work in there and stuff. The gal that we bought from got hers, I think, about 2012 or so.

14:34 She had been doing this business. We were familiar with her. She was a customer of ours

14:40 over the years. We would send her our quilt samples when we didn't have time to do them

14:48 ourselves. She would do ours. We knew her very well. Late last year, her machine broke,

14:57 so she said, which I think it was true. Then out of the blue, she emailed us

15:04 privately and said, hey, I've been evaluating my health. I want to retire. Would you guys be

15:10 interested in buying the machine? We went, that's an interesting thought. She goes, oh,

15:17 it'll really help boost your revenue in the store. Revenue is always something we're trying

15:21 to drive in the store. It helps pay the bills. We got to thinking about it. We went over and

15:26 saw it. She showed us how it worked. We went over and liked it. We found a space in our store. We

15:38 moved a few fixtures around. Then that all worked out really well for us. That was that. We called

15:46 you guys up. We moved it over and set it up. The rest is history. We're doing it. Customers are

15:53 bringing them in. They're happy. We're happy to help them. You had one of our gamble guys come

16:01 set that up for you? Yeah. I think it was Carl, who probably a lot of people know. He flew out.

16:13 I rented a trailer and he had it all taken apart. He took it apart and he threw it in the trailer.

16:21 We drove five miles and undid it. The way we went was great. It was super slick. Okay.

16:29 Well, since you've had the gamble, have you been able to actually

16:37 start doing quilts on it? I've personally done 20 to 30 already. Between our staff and stuff,

16:51 we've probably done close to 100 now in three months. We're averaging one to one and a half a

16:58 day. We can turn them around pretty quickly when you have staffing that can drop in and

17:07 run it for three to four hours at a time. Ideally, I'd like a morning and afternoon shift every day.

17:13 I think we could take on even more. We're not ramped up quite to that yet, but we're getting

17:18 there. I'll tell you, there are a lot of people who have these machines. They keep them running

17:28 almost around the clock. It's a pretty sturdy machine.

17:35 How many hours a day are you running that machine, you think?

17:42 Usually from eight to eight with two shifts. Then other times, it might just be one shift

17:50 for the day. It just depends on the people's availability that we have trained right now.

17:58 I'm trying to build the process. It's new. We set up a back room with an ironing board,

18:07 with a big table I built on it, with the sealing cloth on it. We try and get our regular staff,

18:16 when they're not busy helping customers, to prep quilts because that's almost half the time.

18:22 By the time you've ironed it, sometimes squaring off the back, whatever you got to do

18:28 to prep that quilt, we want it done. Then we have a big rack we hang them on.

18:34 Then when somebody comes in to quilt, they're not spending time doing that. They're getting

18:37 it on the machine and they're getting it going. That's an efficiency technique

18:43 that we're trying to develop.

18:45 Is that one of your staff that's there with you right now?

18:51 This here is Mr. Bingley.

18:54 Very nice.

18:55 It's so funny. Every time we shoot, we shoot a lot of YouTube videos with my wife doing

18:59 instructional videos. He's always there whenever we're shooting videos and quilting. He's always

19:09 around. He's very cute. He loves the quilting.

19:11 Loves the quilting.

19:13 Let me ask you, Jerry. A lot of the people that are watching would be interested to know,

19:21 as far as charging for the making of quilts, do you go by the inch, by the hour,

19:31 or do you know the process for that?

19:34 It depends. We leveraged a lot of what the gal did that we got the machine from. She had a

19:42 formula that she used and we tweaked it for ourselves. There's a baseline charge by the

19:49 square inch. Then we add a thread fee based on the number of square inches of the quilt.

20:00 And so, that'll go up a little bit. It's not a lot. It's like, you know, 5, 7, 9, 12, you know, some number of dollars, depending on it. And we have a minimum quilting fee of 50 dollars.

20:15 So, if it's really small, it still takes time to do. So we have a minimum of that. And then we add a pattern fee on to that. And we add the pattern fee.

20:27 To everybody, whether we buy the pattern or not, we just work that into the cost and then there's, you know, batting, if they buy batting off the roll, we'll charge them our normal retail price for the batting that's required.

20:44 And then in California, you get to pay sales tax on the whole kitten caboodle.

20:51 And that's how we do it. And we take it in and we don't. So, when they come in and they ask me, I don't give them how much, you know, we get a lot of people ask how much per square inch and I don't tell them what I do is I have a table with with some number of square inches and a few, you know, samples of 60 by 80 and 70 by 90 or whatever.

21:13 And then, if they know approximately the number of square inches of their quilt, then I give them a range from it's usually a 20 to 30 dollar range. So that they don't know what's hidden in the cost that I roll up on that.

21:27 And and that's and and they're usually fine with that. I go, here's your rough estimate. Let me do a detailed estimate. The other thing we do is we usually add anywhere from.

21:39 8 to 20 dollars if we have to do extra labor, like piece of back.

21:46 Some people just drop their back off. They just throw it there and then they're like, oh, you didn't piece it. Well, you get to pay for it. We'll so it we'll do that. Or even squaring off takes time. So we'll put a small charge on there for squaring off.

22:00 Right now, we're not.

22:04 Trimming the quilts, I'm thinking about doing that. The guy we bought it from always did.

22:12 And just make that an upcharge you want to trim. Okay.

22:17 We'll just charge it and that's another way to maybe make some more money.

22:22 So, yeah, and I will, I will tell you, Jerry, along with all the people watching that.

22:28 Uh, I, you would probably benefit from going back and watching all the, uh, the back, uh, issues of of this podcast because you'll see 1 thing that you'll see is.

22:40 Um, a, a large variety of.

22:46 Different ways that people, uh, have their, their charging structure, just like you're, you're discussing and from just from listening to other people.

22:56 A lot of times you might pick and choose a little. Oh, that sounds like a good thing for for our setup too.

23:03 So, I watched 1, I watched 1 yesterday and I picked up exactly that. Like, why aren't we trimming it and charging them? Like, oh, I'm going to do that.

23:12 Yes, yes, yeah, you'll be able to improve your business. I, I have a question here from Lisa that says.

23:20 Um, she was listening to talking about the people that are watching this know that you're relatively new on the gamble right now. And she's saying, what is the learning curve? Like, your, your process seems to be quite smooth.

23:33 100 quilts in 4 months seems to be highly productive.

23:38 Has it been easy to transition to the long arm?

23:42 It's pretty easy. It hasn't been without his rope bumps.

23:49 And honestly, strangely enough, I'm going to be, I'm going to be up front with you. I haven't watched any videos.

23:55 I haven't watched any, we were trained by the person who did it. She had written up a process to follow. We follow that process pretty much to the T, right?

24:08 And when we made some mistakes, we tweaked our process a little bit.

24:14 We haven't had too many snafus I've only had to pick out a few rows here and there when, when the tension went wonky, and I didn't see it underneath and got the eyelashes, you know, that happens and then you go fix it just kind of say.

24:31 Learning experience and and move on. I mean, that that's kind of stuff happens.

24:37 And then you scratch your head and you go, what did I do wrong? You know, what caused this? You know, and then you start to you start to go. Okay. Don't forget to put the side clamps on before you based or, you know, whatever you need to do because otherwise you're risking yourself having a problem.

24:56 For sure, gotcha. Um, how would you say as far as a productivity? I know you're still early in the process.

25:06 Uh, how would you say the, I don't know if you operated before on a, what is a mid arm or just a machine? I've never been on a mid arm or a long arm ever.

25:16 Okay, so y'all didn't. Okay.

25:20 I'm an engineer, maybe it was easy for me to learn, but, you know, I've trained other people on our staff have learned equally as well. And, um.

25:31 You know, you follow the instructions on the screen and, you know, what to do in between.

25:37 You're fine, you know, if you, if you just do those things and pay attention and, you know, don't walk away for too long, you can make you can make it.

25:49 I don't know. I found the learning curve not too bad.

25:54 Okay, well, having the quilting shop for a long time, is there any trends or shifts in what quilters are looking for these days? Do you notice anything like that?

26:09 Over the years that we've seen is that quilters seem to want to get together and so, and they'll pay to do it and and the best thing about this new location we got into 5 years ago is we added a sewing room and we can, we can give 20 people a 6 foot table and we hold, we hold 3 day weekend retreats once a month and it's packed.

26:38 Um, they just want to get together and so, and we used to offer classes on specific quilts and we, we put out a newsletter every 4 months.

26:50 It's about a 10 page newsletter with all our classes in it and we've done that since the beginning. Never missed it a little bit and cope with, but we pretty much have been right on the money every 4 months like clockwork.

27:04 And a lot of our classes have shifted to clubs. We now have 5 pages of clubs.

27:11 And it's pretty much the same people just want and so and so we have these little groups and they come in some during the day. Some in the evening, some on the weekends. And I'm telling you, when they're in the store, they shop, you get somebody that's going to sit there for 3 days and they come and they spend their money.

27:31 So, and it's working out really well for us. So that's probably the biggest trend I've seen.

27:40 In the business, just just for us. Yeah. Yeah.

27:46 Well, so with your shop, starting back in the 2000s.

27:53 How how is your shop adapted to.

27:58 Online sales, online media and stuff like that.

28:03 What, what, what, what kind of trends? What have you seen with that?

28:07 That was the transition that that we had to make.

28:13 Back when we started, we had a point of sale system that was just on our computer.

28:19 And all our inventory was stored locally, and it worked, we could have a couple of computers, but they seem to be able to manage the inventory that way.

28:30 And then probably 1015 years ago, we transitioned to an online point of sales, because back then you could put fabric up on the website prior to the cloud.

28:45 But if somebody bought something at your store, and you didn't update the inventory online, somebody could online try and buy it when it was gone.

28:54 And so we moved to a cloud based point of sale system from rain retail and.

29:00 It's pretty seamless. There's 1. they own the inventory on their cloud.

29:06 And we just click a check mark to put it on the website or not on the website and that's been really beneficial.

29:14 And then, just in this last year, they did something that I didn't expect.

29:19 They, they embedded an AI descriptor in there so that I can take a picture of the fabric and click a button and it writes a description of the fabric for the metadata that goes on the Internet and our sales have picked up just from regular use of using AI to describe the fabric.

29:43 You know, instead of just having the name of the fabric on there, which was the shortcut now, you have a description to go with it. It's pretty cool. Really? Nice. Awesome.

29:52 Well, Jerry, do you do you use any programs to manage your revenue planning? Any of that?

30:01 Um, yeah, you have to I mean, like I said, I come from an engineering background, so I understand a lot of the tools my my wife and I both have MBA. So we understand the basic accounting. So that's been useful.

30:16 We use QuickBooks for a lot of our accounting and then I, I like the fact that that stuff is stored in a database.

30:25 And so with my old system was really nice because I could write code and drill into the database. This 1, they don't let me do that.

30:34 But I can create reports from them that and I can export data into a CSV file that I can edit in Excel and then I can scour things.

30:48 I can look for trends. I can summarize. I can send emails to groups of people. There's a lot of things I can do external to their system just by accessing the data, but it's just usual basic tools.

31:01 I mean, I track my sales in Excel at least once a month and and then we use the accounting tools to keep track of our business.

31:11 So, that's kind of how we do it. It's not they, they provide a wide range of reports. So, you know, daily sales and all that kind of stuff is a no brainer. You know, they, they have all that built in.

31:23 Well, with the, with the gamble machine that you now have, how do you see, I guess, both now and moving forward? How do you see this long arming complimenting the, your quilt shop going forward?

31:43 It's good because anytime you get somebody in the store, they're potentially shopping and so having it physically located in the store brings them in the store to drop it off, brings them in the store to pick it up and, you know, it's, it's not taking up really any, any of my sales space, I just, you know, carved out of space and move some things around.

32:10 So, we didn't have to reduce our inventory or anything. It also is a novelty. People come in and they see it and they're like, wow, that's really cool. And they see it operating. Right? And I said, well, I could bring my quilt in and have you do it. And and so it, it spurs interest in general.

32:29 One of the things we're exploring now that that we had never done before is we didn't really carry many wide backs in our store. And I'm seeing a lot of our customers bring in white backs that they didn't buy from us.

32:43 And so we're starting to carry wide backs and thinking that this will generate some more fabric sales so that they're not buying their bins somewhere else.

32:53 And I, that was a surprise to me. I didn't realize how much people like the white backs with with my interviewing of you. We kind of, we're kind of going back and forth from your experience with the quilt shop.

33:06 And also with with your gamble machine that you currently have, but I do want to ask you, because for the people that are watching, they want to know.

33:15 How they can build their business and, you know, what things have been good or, or not so good. Is there anything that you wish that someone had told you that you wish you would have known early on when you started this particular business?

33:32 In particular.

33:37 Business is a whole different answer our business because in the, in the quote business, I wish somebody would told me that the, that there's unless you're like, really online and you're really on it and you're doing a lot on social media, your, your business is, is going to be adequate to probably pay your bills, especially if you have a brick and mortar, but it's not going to make you rich.

34:04 Right. I can see with the long arm, even though I have to pay the labor for my staff, I can still make a decent amount of money per hour on that machine. And the more hours it's operating, the more we're making right? When I go in and operate it, and I try and do it about 20 hours a week, I'm not paying anybody to operate it.

34:32 I'm not paying anybody to operate it. So it's all revenue for me. So that that's a way of looking at it from an owner's perspective. I do all the shop samples. For example, I wouldn't pay my staff to do a shop sample on there.

34:48 Because basically, that would probably cost me money. So it's better for me to do it. And I give my staff a discount on their quilting. And I insist on doing their quilt unless they feel strongly otherwise, because again, the margins too small when you give them a discount. So there's just ways to approach it that it's more business like, I guess.

35:13 Yes. Well, in the process of both the quilting shop and the recent development of the long arm, who or what has been your biggest support over the years in doing this?

35:34 Well, for me, I mean, my wife and I are partners in this. Absolutely. You know, it was funny early on people didn't really get that, you know, with the man being in the store and this and that, but of course, my regular customers all see me as an equal, because, you know, I didn't even sew when we opened the quilt store, my wife was the quilter.

36:02 And so, because we had full time jobs, we had part time managers and part time staff that ran the store, maybe about, could be almost 10 years in, I finally decided that I would like to do this.

36:17 And so my wife got me a machine, and now we share a sewing room in the house with our machines facing each other and we sew. And, you know, I think having that experience of being a quilter helps you interact with long armers, like, we understand more about fabric choices, thread choices, color, all that kind of stuff has really made it better for us to do that and make people feel comfortable doing it.

36:47 Leaving their quilt, because we'll give them suggestions, you know, because a lot of them, they just don't know, and they're looking for your guidance and that, I think the experience of that store really pays off in that perspective, just that being a friend.

37:01 If we were just Joe Blow setting up a long arm business and not ever having been a quilter or understanding that fabric, I think it'd be more challenging, definitely to add a bigger curve.

37:15 Whereas it's pretty comfortable for all of us to get in there and interact and deal with the customers very much.

37:23 Yeah, well, I want to ask you this one question, and recognizing that you're still relatively new in the long arming, but from your perspective, and you do have a unique perspective, you know, just because you're a little bit of a short timer with this, do you, do you have, do you feel that

37:49 running a long arm business is something that has a good potential for success for, like, somebody is watching this, what, what would you, what would you say to them based on your limited amount of experience thus far?

38:07 Let me get you to repeat the 1st part of your sentence that the audio cut off a little bit.

38:18 I would recommend it. Yeah, if you can attract customers and depends on your area, of course, and how much available, you know, how many quilters, et cetera, but if you can generate a regular stream of customers.

38:33 So, for example, the gal that we bought it from.

38:39 She was notorious for turning your quilt around in 1 day, which was amazing and everybody loved her for it and she got to a point where she stopped taking new customers because she didn't want that backlog, but she had enough regular customers that just fed her constantly and she finally cut back from working 70 hours a week to, like, 40 ish, but because she isn't paying rent, like, we have to pay for our space.

39:09 And she's not paying staff, which we have to pay that all that money other than what she was putting out for the cost of thread and batting was pure profit for her. She paid for her machine in less than a year.

39:22 Easily, and then she had 11 more years of just pretty much profit other than the maintenance and that she had to deal with. So she made a decent living with that. I'd say.

39:38 I can't really tell you what what she was making, but it was plenty, you know, it was.

39:43 Upwards near of 6 figures, you could easily get over 6 figures with if you really go at it.

39:49 It's a lot of labor and you're spending a lot of time, but if you had a partner in your household that somebody's prepping and you're quilting and you keep that machine busy by the 2 of you were.

40:00 You can make bank. You can do pretty well.

40:04 So, that's, I wouldn't hesitate to tell people to start this business.

40:10 It seems like a good thing to do.

40:13 Great. Well, thank you for that.

40:16 Jerry, we're getting ready to wrap up, but looking over the next five years or so,

40:26 what do you hope or think that the next five years will look like for your shop,

40:32 and now your long-arm setup, too?

40:35 What kind of vision do you have for your business?

40:41 I like to be an optimist.

40:43 So, I'd like to see a steady, slow growth of our shop and customers.

40:52 And we want to stay present.

40:57 And you have to do that by building your social media.

41:02 You've got to be able to reach beyond your community.

41:05 You've got to get a little bit more online sales.

41:08 And so, that's the path that we need to grow on in order to sustain our business.

41:15 And it doesn't have to grow a lot.

41:19 I need enough money to make sure I can pay rent and payroll every month.

41:24 And so, I want that to grow.

41:28 And you do that by building loyal customers for your base, and then you add on with additional.

41:35 And that being said, over the years,

41:43 do you know what would you say has been your primary way to grow your customer base?

41:53 Do you have any feedback on that?

41:57 It's different for the quilt business than maybe a long-arm business,

42:00 because for us, we got our name known by vending at quilt shows.

42:04 And we would go to local shows, and we would go to regional shows and national shows.

42:09 And we were brand that way, and people became to know who we were very well.

42:15 And that was the kind of thing that works for us.

42:20 In a long-arm business, it might be a little bit different.

42:23 Word of mouth goes a long way.

42:27 Put your cards out in local quilt stores.

42:29 Do what you can to get yourself known.

42:34 Before we had long-arm, we had business cards in store.

42:37 We still have a few.

42:38 I don't care.

42:41 But we would run out of them and stuff.

42:43 And there were certain filters we would recommend personally, and certain ones we would go,

42:48 you should see what their quilting looks like before you choose to use them, that kind of thing.

42:54 And so, it's like that's a great way to kind of get your name out there and develop regular customers.

43:02 If they like you and you go above and beyond, they'll keep coming back.

43:08 I mean, we had one local long-armer that they'll put your binding on.

43:13 They'll do all that stuff.

43:14 You know, they'll put a label on the back.

43:16 You want all that?

43:17 Sure, I'll do it for you.

43:20 That's up to you.

43:21 You know, I'm not sure I want to pay my staff.

43:25 I can't really mark up that stuff enough to pay my staff to do it.

43:28 So, some of those things I may not offer.

43:32 But I might have a business card of somebody who does bindings.

43:36 Yeah, she'll do it for you.

43:38 Go for it.

43:39 Call her.

43:40 Then we have a symbiotic relationship with her, and she likes it.

43:44 Yeah.

43:46 Well, Jerry, I really do appreciate you joining us on Quilting Business Success tonight.

43:55 I'm going to give you a chance to, if there's people that would like to either get in touch with you or find you,

44:01 I'm going to ask you to give whatever information you would like to give us for that.

44:07 But I wanted to encourage the people watching or listening to, if you have not already,

44:15 to watch as many of these episodes of this particular Quilting Business Success podcast that you can.

44:26 Because the benefit that you get is a lot of different people's viewpoints from different stations of life.

44:34 And it really will help you a lot in your personal business there.

44:41 So, Jerry, if people would like to get in touch with you or find you, how can they get in touch with you?

44:49 Ways to do that.

44:52 You can e-mail me.

44:55 I'm fine with that.

44:56 My name's Jerry, and it's at cottonandchocolate.com.

45:00 You spell it all out.

45:01 That's the same as our website.

45:03 You can go to our website.

45:04 It's really easy to find.

45:06 You remember the word chocolate.

45:08 You can usually find us, Cotton and Chocolate.

45:10 So, cottonandchocolate.com.

45:12 There's a contact us spot on there.

45:15 You can reach out to me.

45:16 I'm the one that receives all those.

45:17 I read them.

45:18 I respond to them.

45:19 We're on Facebook and Instagram, Cotton and Chocolate.

45:23 So you can find us there and keep track of us.

45:27 We're happy to help.

45:28 We're pretty well.

45:30 We service our community, and we try and go above and beyond.

45:33 I delivered a quilt locally today because the gal had a pacemaker put in.

45:39 So I personally just drove it to her house.

45:42 You know, that's what we do.

45:45 So that goes a long way, right?

45:48 Yes, yes, definitely does.

45:50 Yeah.

45:51 Well, Jerry, thank you so much for joining us on Quilting Business Success.

45:56 It's really been a pleasure talking to you.

45:58 Sure.

45:59 And feel free to call us anytime at GAML.

46:02 And I guess that'll wrap it up for this week of Quilting Business Success.

46:08 Jerry Peterson, thank you very much.

46:10 Thank you.

46:11 Everybody, you guys have a great week.

46:13 Bye-bye.

46:14 Bye-bye.

46:15 Okay.

46:16 Bye-bye.

46:17 Bye-bye.