5.0
Building a Digital Home for Sewing Enthusiasts After the JOANN Closures
Texas and Arizona
Challenge
In May 2025, the closure of Viking Sewing Galleries inside JOANN stores left thousands of owners who had invested between $1,000 and $15,000 in their machines, without local support, training, or technical service. While Ultimate Sewing Company had a strong social media following, they lacked a central digital home to help these displaced customers. They needed a platform to provide service, training, and sales in one place.
Solutions
We had to build a scalable digital foundation that managed operations across four physical locations in Texas and Arizona. The primary technical hurdle was integrating WordPress and WooCommerce with their Square POS system to ensure real-time accuracy for complex product data, pricing, and inventory across all sites. Integrating WooCommerce with Square is usually simple, but this project involved cleaning up product data, SKUs, variations, and inventory across four locations. Also, the existing Square WordPress plugin wasn't reliable enough for the complexity of the catalog, so we had to customize the plugin to ensure inventory, pricing, and product information stayed accurate across all stores.
We created a comprehensive digital hub that mirrors the personalized, in-store experience including:
- Machine Finder quiz: A tool that mimics a consultant’s expertise to guide users through complex purchase decisions.
- Class and event portals: Dedicated spaces for "Owner’s Classes" and creative workshops to foster customer loyalty.
- Consignment management: A structured system that allows customers to upgrade their equipment while keeping high-value machines in circulation.
Results
This project succeeded by focusing on the full customer journey rather than just product sales. By honoring existing service agreements from the former galleries, the brand became a reliable partner for stranded owners. We shifted the focus from merely selling a machine to providing the ongoing technical support and community education that these owners rely on.
The new website brought everything together under one roof: customers can now find machines, classes, events, service information, and support in one place, creating an experience that feels much closer to visiting one of Ultimate Sewing Company's stores.
Q&A
Question: What made this project different from a typical ecommerce website?
Answer: Rather than focusing solely on product sales, the site was designed around the entire customer journey. In addition to ecommerce functionality, it provides machine education, owner's classes, events, technical support, and a consignment program. The goal was to recreate the personalized, in-store experience online and build long-term relationships with customers which turned the website into a trusted resource and community hub rather than simply a place to buy sewing machines.
Question: How did the website replicate the in-store experience?
Answer: The site was designed to guide customers through machine selection, education, training, and ongoing support which ultimately created an experience similar to working with an expert in person.
Question: Why was WooCommerce chosen for this project?
Answer: WooCommerce gave the flexibility needed to manage products, classes, events, and custom functionality and also integrated seamlessly with the client's existing systems. What is equally important is that WordPress made it easy for the team to manage informational content including location pages and educational resources without relying on developers for day-to-day updates.
Featured Work
