Using web-based content to sponsor a drive to encourage home quilters to make quilts for donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has resulted in more than 4,200 quilts for children in the past two years and helped establish Hancock Fabrics as a source for quilting material, David Uptagrafft, Hancock’s manager of online services, tells Internet Retailer.
“The web site makes the whole thing much easier,” Uptagrafft says. “People who have never been to a Hancock Fabrics store might never have found information about the contest if it hadn’t been for the web site.” In addition, quilters can download as many entry forms as they like from the web site, relieving Hancock of the need to print tens of thousands of forms and distribute them to stores.
Two years ago, Hancock Fabrics began The Quilt of Dreams contest as a way to benefit St. Jude Hospital. Hancock creates fabrics with designs from children at the hospital and requires that each quilt contain a piece of that fabric. The first year, it received 762 entries. Last year, it received 3,500. Hancock Fabrics displayed them at the Civic Center in Tupelo, MS, Hancock Fabrics’ home base, before dry cleaning them and sending them to St. Jude. The winner receives a gift certificate to Hancock Fabrics.
“Traditionally we haven’t been known as a quilt shop, but we wanted to,” Uptagrafft says. “This helps a lot.”
The Quilt of Dreams and a free projects section of HancockFabrics.com account for about 5% of page views, Uptagrafft reports.
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