| Notes |
- ! Copyright 1984-2024 FamilyHart, Inc (A Nonprofit Corporation) -
NAME: REIN BOOK, VOL 2, PG 39.
BIRTH: U.S. PUBLIC RECORDS, 1970-2007
DEATH: OBIT, GASTON GAZETTE, 18 MAR 2017
From the Gaston Gazette today: (15 JAN 2016)
Mary Jo?s Cloth Store celebrates two milestones Saturday.
The multimillion-dollar fabric empire marks 65 years of sales to customers from Gastonia to China, from Charlotte theater producers to Hollywood films like ?The Patriot.?
The other celebration is for the woman who founded the company and supplied its name.
Mary Jo Cloninger, who turns 84 Saturday, has reduced her role in the business over the years. Most of her time nowadays is spent at Covenant Village retirement community. She won?t be in the store for the celebration Saturday.
But her name remains on the lips of customers and employees alike.
The day-to-day operations of the store are handled by her son, CEO and CFO Thomas Cloninger, 62.
He visits each department of the store, checking on the 55 employees who sell everything from one-of-a-kind laces to sewing machines, flanked by his cousin, Josh Cloninger, 31.
Josh started as a teenager unloading trucks. Now an assistant manager in the store, he currently oversees a redesign of the company?s almost 7-year-old website.
The redesign should help the store better share its unique inventory with buyers, he said.
You can buy sewing machines anywhere,? he said. ?When you come here, you?re getting us.
The store has concentrated its efforts on a strategy of offering service alongside fabric products.
Employees teach potential buyers proper technique with sewing machines. Since 2013, the store has held sewing and quilting classes for adults and children ages 9 to 14.
The Cloningers pushed that classroom space from 800 square feet to 2,000 a few months ago.
The classes have been a positive way to build loyalty in a younger demographic, said Pam Carter, an assistant manager and sewing center director.
Services have held a more important role in winning loyalty from a new generation of buyers, Carter said.
Families have less time than ever to pass sewing and stitching lessons, but kids remain as interested as ever in craft and design, she said. Instead of mom and grandma, kids have sought instruction from niche social networks like Pinterest and how-to videos on YouTube.
We just really enjoy teaching people how to be creative,? said Carter, who left a job in financial services to work for Mary Jo?s about three years ago. ?We take a machine and make it do whatever we want.?
Even in the decades since a 19-year-old Mary Jo Cloninger talked her dad into co-signing a $500 bank loan for her startup inventory, the industry remains dominated by men, Carter said.
The anniversary event celebrates not the staff and not the employees, but a woman who faced the odds to cut a slice of the industry for herself and, by extension, Gaston County, she said.
The event will commemorate Mary Jo Cloninger?s start date with 65 cent specials, ?50s music and a key to the city presentation by Gastonia Mayor John Bridgeman to another Cloninger son, Gaston County Sheriff Alan Cloninger.
Mary Jo herself will receive a certificate for the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, an award issued by the governor for community service.
?This store is a treasure, but no one knows our reach,? Thomas Cloninger, the CEO, said. ?She ran this business for her employees and her customers.?
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1932 - 2017 (85 years)
