I recently ordered from Keepsake Quilting in the US. When I thought about the customs duty and VAT, I was convinced that it would not be easy to buy fabric affordably.
Quilt fabric tends to cost Eur 12-14 per meter (a meter is about 10% more than a yard). You can find sales as low as Eur 8, but the normal prices tend to be well over Eur 10.
Don't get me wrong - I know that everything tends to be about that much higher-priced here than in the US, and I understand the reasons for it, both social and practical.
Social, because we want to have a decent life for all here, without taking advantage of people in other countries, simply to have the cheapest price. That means taxes are higher, with the resulting increase in benefits.
Practical, because there are simply fewer quilters here, which implies lower volume of sales, which tends to raise costs. Fair enough. Also, if you have to wait for minimum 1 month to get your fabric, and don't know what might be sold out, it can get rather inconvenient when you're designing a quilt.
That's why I buy, and will continue to buy, most of my fabric locally. I love my local quilt shop.
In this case, I wanted to take advantage of Keepsake's 100 FQ package. They use fabric that is not selling as well as anticipated, and offer it at a bargain price of $1 per FQ. The downside is you don't get to choose the fabrics, and that includes the quality. So I bought with trepidation, in case I was paying for poor quality fabric. That did not happen - I got marvelous quality, and a great variety of fabrics. Manufacturers included Andover, Moda, Robert Kaufman, and more.
So what were the costs, after duty, shipping and tax were paid? Here's how it broke down:
- Fabric (2 scrap bags, 1 FQ collection, 1 10" square collection): $172
- Postage: $24
- Duty: none because the total value excluding shipping was less than EUR 150 (was EUR 130)
- VAT: EUR 27.62, which corresponds to a rate of 21.2% for textiles
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