Why is designer fabric only available for a short time?

What I want to know is, are most designer fabrics really only available for a short period of time?  It seems like in the past year I have found some prints that I just adore, but then when I'm finally ready to buy, it's sold out.  Do these fabrics come back? I keep waiting for the stores to restock, and it's just not coming back in.  Does it not work that way? Do you really have to just snap fabric up right away, when it first comes out?  I don't always know what project a fabric would be great for the first time I see it, so I wouldn't know how much to buy.

That is a good question!  There are a lot of reasons, actually, but a lot of it is just the market--buyers want fresh and new, so shops only carry what is hot and now. Of course shops need to turn things quickly in order to stay afloat, so we end up both feeding and creating demand.

A lot of it also has to do with the manufacturers' business models.  The manufacturers all sell to buyers from paper samples or strike-offs several months before the fabric is available.  They use those orders to estimate how much fabric to have printed.  I know one of the manufacturers only prints a little beyond what is presold and that is it--the end of the collection no matter how popular it is. They don't reprint it, so it is here and gone before you know it.  Some of the manufacturers will reprint, but only when they have a certain number or yards back-ordered.  This is why you can sometimes see something out of stock on our site for several weeks or even months.  We've reordered from the manufacturer, but they are still collecting orders so we don't have any idea when we'll receive it.

And of course the designers themselves have a hand in it too.  They need to stay in the public eye and be perceived as contemporary and fresh, and one way to do that is to produce something new.  That's not to say that they wouldn't love to see their collections in print forever.  I do think that we've seen an over-saturation in the market of some designers in the past 2 years.  It will be interesting to see if they try to keep collections live for a little longer rather than printing 2 or 3 groups back-to-back.

Thanks for the great explanation Kristin!  Unfortunately, your answer also makes me sad because it means that those fabrics really are gone!  I suppose I will just have to buy the fabrics as they come, and hope that I estimated wisely.