Joanns died b/c of two things - they stocked items no one really wanted, and they doubled down on that by opening way too many stores.
With a focus on fabric and yarn, they would still be here - maybe. Handcock Fabrics went the same way and they died. Hopefully, someone will take a clue and start a new focused venture. Buying fabric over the web is horrendous.
This wasn’t my experience, if anything, they often didn’t have stock in the store and told us to go online to buy the item.
And 800+ stores doesn’t seem like over saturation, it looks like there are more BestBuy and Hobby Lobby stores than that and they both sell stuff that most folks would feel equally comfortable buying online. Where, as you rightly stated, buying fabric online is a non starter for most folks.
My experience was similar to the author, bare shelves and 1 or 2 folks around to help customers…it honestly felt more like purposeful neglect on the part of the owners.
With a focus on fabric and yarn, they would still be here - maybe. Handcock Fabrics went the same way and they died. Hopefully, someone will take a clue and start a new focused venture. Buying fabric over the web is horrendous.