By the end of February 2025, the company began the process of liquidating all of its stores after failing to obtain a buyer. 255 stores were shuttered by the end of April while the remaining 535 locations permanently closed by May 30, 2025, a day ahead of the planned closing schedule.
It was revealed on June 5 that Michaels had acquired all of Joann’s intellectual property and website, but none of the physical stores.
What is the US communities opinion on closing these in OSM? In my opinion it’s easier to bulk remove them quickly, if we leave it to happen organically it’ll take years if not decades, if we wait months we have to start thinking about tagging.
Right now, these will basically all be disused:shop=craft, and It’s relativity easy to turn shop=craft into disused:shop=craft and remove website and other tags.
But soon they’ll be reopening as other unknown shops, if we get into that state there should probably be a conversation about disused:shop=craft vs shop=yes vs doing nothing as there will be no universal answer.
When I stated writing this, I wasn’t volunteering to do the edit, but I think I’ve changed my mind, if there is quick consensus, I will do the edit.
I would support mass removal (at least turning them into disused:shop=craft from shop=craft) based on my experience how such dead brands are NOT processed.
My area still has some shops from brands that died years ago, and it has vastly higher mapper density than in USA.
How likely is that some actually operate under dead brand? But they do not seem to be a franchise so it is less likely.
disclaimer: I am not a local mapper at all. Please treat this opinion as less important
I think we’d want to differentiate between franchises and owned-and-operated stores. When a franchiser goes under, successful franchisees often continue doing business under a different name or even the same name, depending on the franchising agreement. That’s how there’s still one Blockbuster left in Bend, Oregon. We would want to be careful about declaring the demise of every single store.
But as far as I know, the entire Jo-Ann chain was O&Os, so they are all indeed closed. It’s still possible that whoever purchased Jo-Ann’s assets, or whoever previously leased many storefronts out to Jo-Ann, might attempt to reopen some of them as fabric stores, but that would be pure conjecture at this point.
I noticed a JOANN store near me (Node: 10750 West Colfax Avenue (7278959378) | OpenStreetMap) was not touched by this bulk edit, maybe because I had a FixMe on it talking about it was closing. I surveyed it today and it’s closed, with no merchandise remaining and only some shelving remains, which is in the process of being broken down. Per Tag:shop=vacant - OpenStreetMap Wiki (section Relation to disused:shop=*), I did not use disused:shop=craft because the store is completely empty and could return as any type of shop.