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About
The Craft Connection
What's so special about us?
Why should you come to us? Well, to start with, we offer great prices and weekly sales. We have extra friendly service. And we go the extra mile on the website for your convenience. For
example, we offer a snippet service so you can check out any fabrics (except UltraSuede and fleece) absolutely free. We show you what fabrics coordinate with others, and we give you easy links to the coordinating fabrics, so you can order them together. We tell you how much we have in stock, when more will arrive, and whether or not we can get more for you. We sell fat quarters of every fabric. We let you buy a whole bolt at a discount. We tell you the fabric width, fiber content, manufacturer, and repeat. And all this in one compact easy-to-use page.
Who
we are
The
Craft Connection has been in business since September of 1997.
It's owned by Linda Jones, a quilter for over 25 years, who also makes dolls and has been sewing since she was a little girl. Our website has been online since November of 1997. We started out with about 75 high-quality cotton fabrics. We now have about 9,000, and we're now adding about 250 new fabrics each month. We also have over a thousand patterns and hundreds of books, and we're adding new categories of craft supplies all the time, such as scrapbooking and wreath-making supplies.
Our goal is to be the one place on the Internet where you can order any craft supplies you can think of, and get them with friendly service at a fantastic price. Just like your neighborhood
quilt shop, and unlike large craft shops like Michael's or Hobby Lobby, we are here to give you advice and help with any problems or questions. We'll special-order anything at no extra charge.
We send free snippets of fabrics or threads if you send us a SASE.
We're people, not computers. We're not trying to drive local quilt
shops out of business. Because the owner of The Craft Connection
is a quilter and a crafter, we understand that you can never have
enough places to look for new materials and tools. Here, you get
the convenience of shopping at home, without giving up all the
personal service you expect in a local shop. So please, just consider
us your "other local shop."
Our
catalog is on-line
We don't
have a printed catalog, because we have an on-line catalog. Because
we add new items every day, a printed catalog couldn't keep up.
Also, printed color catalogs are very expensive, and if we had
one, we wouldn't be able to offer the discounts we do. We do have
an index and an easy-to-use
Search
page, so we hope you'll find shopping online to be just as convenient as using a printed catalog.
From our very beginning, we have been anxious to hear how we can help you. We have made lots of changes and improvements to the website based on your comments and questions.
So please do tell us if you have any items
you think we should add, or any way you think we could make the website easier or more fun for you to use.
Where we are
The Craft Connection is located in Onley, VA, on Virginia's Eastern Shore. We're no longer open to the public, as we've decided to concentrate on our website, which has always been the heart of our business.
Shipping
We ship
most orders the same day we get them. We pledge to always ship
within 48 hours, or we'll e-mail you with the reason we're having
a delay, and give you the opportunity to change or cancel your
order.
Shipping is by US Postal Service. Our shipping rates
are simply what it costs, we don't add any handling charges (we do have to estimate before we pack up your package, so we can't guarantee the charge will be identical to the actual charges, but we try). There's no shipping charge for gift certificates.
Shipping is from:
The
Craft Connection
21055 Front Street
Onley, VA 23418
(this is NOT our postal mailing address)
Our mailing address is:
The Craft Connection
P O Box 1088
Onley, VA 23418
This means that you pay no sales tax unless we are shipping to an address in Virginia.
Your personal information
www.craftconn.com is a completely secure site. That means that it is impossible for anyone to steal your credit card information online.
Also,
The Craft Connection will never share any of your information
with anyone for any purpose. We do not sell names, addresses,
phone numbers or any other information. And we won't bother you,
either. We may send an individual message to someone if we feel
we have something that person has been waiting for, but we don't
send any mass mailings or mass e-mails. We do have an e-mail
newsletter, and you're welcome to sign up for it by e-mailing us.
Returns
If
you are unhappy with your purchase, we don't want you to have
to keep it. If we make a mistake or if the fabric is defective,
then we'll pay your expense to return the fabric, and we'll send
a replacement right away.
But sometimes you'll receive a piece of fabric that is what you ordered
and isn't defective, but it just doesn't look right in your living
room or on your daughter, and you'd like to return it. In many
cases the page has been removed from the website so we can't resell
the fabric, and in any case we have no way of knowing if we can
sell that particular length. And a large percentage of our expense
is the labor of pulling the bolts and measuring the fabric (and
of course that expense is doubled by having to go find the bolts
to return a piece).
So the bottom line is, the standard in the walk-in retail fabric in dustry is that no returns are allowed on cut fabric. In the online fabric industry, the standard is to allow returns, but
to charge a 15% restocking charge. We have to reluctantly adhere to that, much as we hate to disappoint our customers.
Unlike other online stores, we do send free snippets if you send us a self-addressed stamped envelope, and tell us the codes for the fabrics you need (no snippets of Ultrasuede or fleece). That way you can see the exact colors of the fabric before you buy. We hope this will work reasonably well for our customers.
Please note that books and patterns cannot be returned unless we sent you an incorrect or defective item. This is to protect the authors' copyrights. We can't let anyone "borrow" a book or pattern and then return it, as this would be unethical and illegal.
Contact
Us
Our
customers can call us toll-free at 888-204-4050. Customers in the Eastern Virginia area should call us at 757-787-7231. Anybody who wants to sell us something should call 757-787-7231.
Our fax number is 757-442-3345. Our postal mailing address is:
The Craft Connection
PO Box 1088
Onley, VA 23418
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