After much uncertainty, it’s confirmed: The “Big 4” sewing patterns have survived the Design Group Americas bankruptcy.

The sewing pattern business, including the Simplicity, McCalls, Vogue, and Butterick brands, was sold as a going concern for $2.25 million to Rubelmann Capital in partnership with existing management.

The new head of Simplicity Creative Group is Abbie Small, who worked at the company for 35 years before her retirement as Executive Vice President and General Manager in 2017. Simplicity Creative Group will continue to operate in New York City, keeping on about 78 employees, many of whom have worked for the company for decades.

“We’re really a startup that’s almost 200 years old, and we feel confident that we’re going to be back and better than ever,” Small told the Craft Industry Alliance podcast.

She was referred to Rubelmann Capital to secure funding. “They love the business. They love the fact that it’s got these amazing brands, they love the fact that it’s got a loyal consumer and a product that is unique,” Small says.

Rubelmann Capital is helping the new company rebuild its entire infrastructure, as the pattern business sale did not include the back-end processes like accounting or email that are necessary for a business to function. It’s an opportunity to build the company smarter, Small says, whereas when the pattern business changed hands in the past, “they never invested in it. They just plugged it into the next thing and hoped it was going to work as well as it did before. These guys are really looking at it from the start to finish of how we can make this easier and better for the consumer,” she says.

The sale includes the historical and vintage library of materials related to Simplicity, Butterick, Vogue and McCall’s sewing and patterns, more than 200 boxes of materials that have been moved to New York. It also includes inventory at the printing plant in Neenah, WI, including its pattern printing presses and equipment for envelope stuffing. These are the last operating tissue paper pattern printing presses in the United States, also used by independent designers who contract with Simplicity for printing.

“There will always be paper patterns as long as I’m around,” Small says. “But the PDFs are going to continue to grow.” In fact, Simplicity is on the verge of introducing projectable sewing patterns — the release was initially slated for September before the sale of the company.

Response from the sewing community

The reaction from sewists has been a collective sigh of relief. “Since they announced the sale of DGA for $1, the Simplicity site had sales nonstop, and that’s not normal,” says Toni Ugueto of SewSewLounge.

“It was making everybody really nervous. The Joann bankruptcy was such a total disaster, where everything was shut down so quickly… people were still having PTSD from that in the spring.”

While indie designers have embraced PDFs and pattern projection technology, many sewists prefer paper, and the Big 4 are the most reliable source.

“I was so concerned about losing access to paper patterns,” says sixth-generation sewist Lisa Woolfolk of Black Women Stitch. “Taping PDF patterns together is hazardous to my health. It reduces my will to live. I would rather mop the ocean than do that.”

Looking at the sewing pattern industry’s development over her lifetime, Woolfolk feels that “the paper pattern industry kind of struggled under the weight of its own success, and it gradually felt almost bloated.” Constant sales made the sticker price on paper patterns seem fake — “I have never, not one time, paid the envelope price for a sewing pattern,” she says — and bricks-and-mortar distribution meant the Big 4 were a step removed from end users.

Plus, the Big 4 has been slow to adapt to modern consumers’ needs and embrace new technologies, Woolfolk says. Traditional sizing isn’t a fit for many modern bodies, and indie pattern makers have jumped in to serve those sewists, creating online communities to have direct lines of communication with customers.

Simplicity Creative Group’s renaissance will require fresh perspectives to be successful. “To remain competitive, they will have to use some of the new fabrics people are really excited about, and they will have to think about their digital plan. There’s a lot they could do, or they could stick with what they’ve always done,” Woolfolk says. “The biggest obstacle will be designing and becoming a legacy brand that doesn’t just rest on what it’s done in the past.”

(A version of this article originally ran in our newsletter for Corporate Members of Craft Industry Alliance, Craft Industry Insider.)

Grace Dobush

contributor