We are a local retailer with a very large selection of fabrics. We have been in Bakersfield for more than 15 years now, and we offer best quality fabrics and related items at the lowest prices possible.
A recent Article about our store: Courtesy of Mas, Bakersfield Californian
Description: F&M Fabrics customers are of different cultures, but all seek good deals, good service at popular east Bakersfield shop
Weaving in and out of the aisles at F&M Fabrics is a cultural mix much like a pattern in the colorful strands threaded through the countless bolts of cloth found at the east Bakersfield shop.
During a typical Saturday afternoon at F&M, Hispanic customers shop alongside Middle Eastern and Indian women, while a Caucasian teenager and her cart of junior theatre costuming supplies crosses paths with an African-American couple from Southern California here for a square dancing competition and annual pilgrimage to their all-time favorite fabric store.
This multicultural rainbow that is their customer base more than pleases F&M’s owners, Marcel and Flori Sescu, Romanian immigrants who opened their first store — also called “F&M Fabrics” (the initials symbolize the couple’s first names) — in 1995.
“Across the board, everyone of all nationalities likes to sew,” said the couple’s only son, Dragos Sescu, 26, who after earning a business and marketing degree from Cal State Bakersfield and meeting and marrying his wife, Klara in Romania, now also works at the family business. “Of course, that means we have all nationalities and all their languages here in our store.”
For the Sescus, that’s not such a big deal.
In any given moment, they seamlessly transition from speaking Spanish to English to Romanian and back to English again.
“Sometimes, it seems like I’m using all three languages at once,” said Marcel Sescu, 51, as he expertly snips another three yards of cotton broadcloth for a customer with his trusty — and very large — pair of scissors purchased used at a flea market 20-plus years ago. “But I don’t mind, I like to be able to communicate with my customers.”
The same goes for his seven employees, all of whom are at least bilingual, if not trilingual, according to Sescu.
When he first came to the United States in 1984, Sescu found work as a cook in Los Angeles. He had been a chef back in Romania.
He sent for his wife the following year, but the pair wanted more than a restaurant business and decided to try their luck with telas, or fabric, and moved to Bakersfield for its affordable housing.
The Sescus soon learned that they could save a lot of overhead costs by locating in the east part of town. That meant a centralized location for the shop, which services many of its neighbors in nearby residential pockets often seen walking, not driving, to and from F&M.
They could also do away with “middle man” fees by picking up their own fabric selections from the various warehouses. That meant many miles traveled to score bargain bolts, which translates to significant savings on fabrics that F&M passes along to its customers.
The couple’s original hut-like fabric shop was located just down the street from its current location, though the combination of little to no storage space and a winter storm flood in 1998 would motivate the Sescus to seek higher and more spacious ground.
By 1999, F&M Fabrics made the move to 2954 Niles St. in the HIllcrest Shopping Center, the site of a former bakery and later, thrift store and today, F&M.
With 10,000 square feet of showroom space and another 8,000 square feet in storage, plus an upstairs office, the Sescus found more than enough wide open spaces to grow their business.
And grow they did.
F&M is known in sewing/fabric/interior design circles as one of Bakersfield’s “best kept secrets” for its wide — make that, very wide — selection of materials at rock bottom prices.
Many fabrics at F&M are just $2 and $3/yard. If you pay $7/yard at F&M, it’s considered splurging.
From cool cottons with baby room motifs and soft T-shirt jersey material to silky satins and flowing chiffons (both of which are regularly bought by women who make their own saris and other cultural garments), you name it, F&M carries it or the Sescus will happily keep their eyes out for what you want during their next buying trip.
Like any retail establishment, F&M sees seasonal trends in the telas business, i.e. the polar fleece material moves like crazy in the fall/winter when people make no-sew knot blankets. Christmas-themed fabrics and materials for tablecloths to use at those big holiday meals also signify that time of the year.
After a typical slow-down immediately following Christmas, things pick back up again with Easter dresses, christenings/confirmations, lighter spring fabrics and summer dressmaking on the rise, the Sescus said.
The store also carries all the typical sewing notions and some not so typical, including unusual patches, tassels, lace trims and spools and spools of ribbon and thread.
There’s also the famous button bin at F&M, which is a large, deep vat of buttons for 10 cents apiece, providing treasure-digging entertainment to many a child who’s accompanied his/her mother on a visit to F&M.
“All the children love the buttons,” said Flori Sescu, 50.
While all the customers love the bargains.
“They’ve got everything and the prices are better than any where,” said Juan Valdez, while supervising his two children, Mariana, 6, and Adan, 9, as they sifted through the ever-popular button bin. “My wife likes all the choices they have here.”
Obdulia Valdez, who was shopping for fabric to be used for a church play, said she likes the prices and also appreciates that the F&M owners speak Spanish. In fact, she originally thought they were Latino, perhaps South American — a common assumption, according to the Sescus.
“I’ve been told that before, that customers think I’m South American, but I think my Romanian-Spanish accent confuses people,” said Marcel Sescu with a laugh.
As for confusion, there’s none to be found when it comes to F&M staff locating a particular fabric, even among the rolls upon rolls of bolts, sometimes stacked at NBA-player heights.
“It’s amazing — they can take you right to the correct bolt of fabric from just a tiny swatch that you may have taken home three months ago,” said customer Maureen Murphy as she shopped with her 18-year-old daughter, Caitlin, a costume designer for the North of the River Junior Theatre.
For Kirk and Nina Cavalier of Orange County, a yearly square dance competition here in Bakersfield gives them the excuse to make the drive over the Grapevine and during a break in the fancy footwork, find their way to F&M.
“I love coming here,” said Nina Cavalier, an avid seamstress. “I start at the front of the store and we work our way to the back, just loading up on all the good stuff.”
Among Cavalier’s treasures secured this day are trims and bright cloths for African garb Cavalier will make for her brother, a preacher, and other fabrics she’ll eventually turn into matching square dancing ensembles for herself and her husband (on this particular day, they’re wearing red-and-white numbers fashioned from materials purchased at F&M on a previous shopping trip).
She may spend $200-plus in this year’s F&M spree, but for that amount of money, the amount of fabric and other sewing materials she’ll get is beyond comparison, Cavalier said.
For the Sescus, selling telas has afforded them a nice life and a good business opportunity here in the United States. They work long hours, but love their multicolored fabrics as well as their multicultural customers.
“I feel like they’re family, I hope they feel the same about us,” said Marcel Sescu.
