“We have to be able to offer them something that they can feel and touch and see and get excited about,” owner Jeri Giannunzio said.

Giannunzio first began working in retail at Montgomery Wards in downtown Iron Mountain in 1969 after graduating from Norway High School.

“That is who really taught me retail,” she said. “It was the old-time retail, where you have a manager, assistant manager, department heads. You had employees who knew their inventory who could help you. I had the fabric department. It really taught me a lot.”

Giannunzio spent seven years with the store before settling down with her husband, Gary, and raising daughters Lia, Lenore, Marcy and Josie. “I took a little break and had children,” she said.

JERI’S QUILT PATCH is in a 1907 former home at 703 Brown St.-U.S. 2 in Norway.

In the early 1980s, Giannunzio started at a small shop across the street from the Thirsty Whale. “We started as a Yours Truly store,” she said.

Eventually, Yours Truly went out of business and Giannunzio became an independent quilt shop.

“People don’t understand retail and how it’s changed. You have to do retail in quilt stores, otherwise you become ‘hoarding’ fabric. You have to have a way of turning it over,” she said.

In 1999, Giannunzio purchased the house at their current location. Today, the 1907 home at 703 Brown St.-U.S. 2 offers 18 rooms filled with fabrics, antique gifts and quilted items.

“We do a lot of pre-cutting, we do a lot of bundles, a lot of kits and a lot of ‘jelly rolls,'” she said, referring to the common name for bundle of precut strips of coordinating fabric. “Because women are so busy nowadays, but they still want a sense of being creative, we try to give them a head start. Maybe we eliminated the cutting for them, or write really good instructions so they can easily get started on something for a quick gift; a baby gift or something for Christmas coming up, table runners, stuff like that.”

She believes taking those extra steps, good customer service and old-fashioned retail still give her the upper hand in this era of online stores.

“We feature bundles to make it easier on people. We offer some free patterns and also have patterns for sale. Quilt kits — we did all the work for them and cut them into strips already, so all they have to do is sit down and start sewing. We have a discount room that is always changing, because things come and go. In retail, you have to move the fabric — it ages, so you have to say goodbye to it. Even though you still like it, you can’t hoard it all,” she said.

Saleswoman Tonia Wilkey has worked at the store for seven years. She graduated from Iron Mountain High School in 2016 and will be graduating from Bay College with a nursing degree in December.

She enjoys seeing the different projects customers are working on.

“It’s so much fun because you get to do so much quilting and you do a lot of crafts,” Wilkey said. “If your crafty or creative, it’s an awesome place to work,” she said.

Giannunzio celebrated the store’s 37th anniversary with a sale that started Sept. 26 and ends at 5 p.m. today.

Theresa Proudfit can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 245, or tproudfit@ironmountaindailynews.com.