West News Wire: The latest cost-cutting measure taken by the online retail giant Amazon is the closure of a company that has been selling fabrics for close to 30 years.
Fabric.com announced its decision to stop selling goods on its website and advised users to make purchases on Amazon in its place. The final day for clients to place orders on the fabric website is Thursday.
A spokesman for Amazon, Betsy Harden, stated in a prepared statement: “As part of our routine business planning, we regularly examine the progress and potential of our offerings and have decided to discontinue Fabric.com.”
The number of employees who will be impacted by the closure is unknown. Amazon will assist with employees to “find other opportunities” at the corporation, including at local businesses, according to Harden. Employees who do not stay with Amazon will be given severance, she said.
News of the closure was first reported by the Craft Industry Alliance.
Georgia-based Fabric.com was founded in 1993 under the name Phoenix Textiles Group. It operated as a wholesale distributor of apparel fabrics for several years before it launched its own website and began selling items directly to consumers.
Amazon acquired the company in 2008. At the time, it said it would help the fabric site expand its selection of items and allow Amazon to offer its customers more sewing and crafting supplies.
The closure of the business comes as Amazon is attempting to cut costs amid worries about the wider economic environment and sluggish online sales. In recent months, it has shuttered its hybrid virtual, in-home care service Amazon Care, implemented a hiring freeze on the corporate side of its retail business and axed some of its other projects.
