The sewing community is abuzz with the fact that Simplicity Creative Group (the company that makes patterns from Simplicity Patterns – McCalls, Simplicity, Butterick and Vogue) got sold for $1 and 75% of sales to the same liquidator that just did Joann. Yes you saw that right. A dollar. And 75% of whatever they can sell.
A small sampling of my vintage and current printed Simplicity Creative Group sewing pattern collection.
Private equity killed the mass market sewing space, and not just this week or this year, but over the last decade. Private equity exists to swoop in, buy, extract as much cash from a company as possible, saddle it with debt and then liquidate.
They aren’t crafters. They’re owned by billionaire men who’ve never made a single thing in their entire lives. They didn’t create a community and people didn’t flock to Joann on a Thursday night after the store closed to sew with friends. They did not clap for their local fabric store owner’s child who walked across a graduation stage last evening, either.
That happens every week at local indie quilt, sewing and knitting stores, all across this country.
I grew up on these patterns (I have a LOT of these patterns!) and in the 1990s when I got back into sewing again, bought a lot of them. I pivoted to mostly indie patterns for about 20 years but recently the KnowMe pattern line from Simplicity showed resurgence with great fresh designs from makers of color (and I loved the creativity of the designs and supporting makers who haven’t traditionally had the exposure or reach they should have.)
So private equity strikes again. It’s never good. It exists only to make rich men richer.
It is long past time to take it back. Everything. Local stores, indie makers, online independent retailers. Small businesses.
I hope I do my part, however small, as a midsize, middle-aged sewing influencer on my YouTube, Instagram and blog. My goal is to show people they can be successful at creating their own wardrobe, regardless (or even to celebrate) their size or age. And that it doesn’t have to be difficult, and it IS possible to disconnect from fast fashion in favor of personal style.
As for this sale, the REAL asset is the masters that they have had for decades – yes, you heard that right, the decades of designs these companies own. There’s a button and thread sculpture in NYC in front of their building for goodness sakes! They have been a part of our sewing lives our whole lives
Designer collaborations and “cutting edge” designs will be harder to come by because indie designers typically can’t invest in a ‘loss leader’ pattern – they have to develop designs they know they can sell over and over. It takes a LOT to make a sewing pattern – I know this intimately from working with indie brands for the past decade on marketing, web development and social strategy (plus videos, which I love to make but all of my design clients hate doing!)
I worry we’ll lose the collaborations with designers that we once had (and truthfully, we have not had any good ones from young designers in a long time.) Some designs, from Issey Miyake and Donna Karan, for instance, sell for hundreds of dollars on Ebay now. I’m told prices have already gone up.
Private equity ruins industries, businesses, and, really the whole fabric of our country. Rich (mainly white) men buy up everything, squeeze every drop of money out, saddle companies with debt and then liquidate them. It’s not in service to craft, or us at all, it’s extracting money from us and leaving us with nothing.
Don’t do that, don’t participate in that. Find a local shop – a quilt shop, a knitting store – and patronize them. Ask your local fabric shop owners to carry what you want to buy – notions, threads, and even fabrics and patterns YOU want to sew with.
This is OUR creativity, our local companies, our time. Let’s take it back from planet-killing fast fashion, and private equity bros.