Notions Marketing, a major distributor in the crafts industry, has closed operations since a June 11 warehouse fire. The company paused all shipping and website orders, causing major disruption for both vendors and retailers. Notions supplies goods to independent retailers and does ecommerce fulfillment for mass market craft retailers, stocking nearly 60,000 items from over 600 brands and serving over 10,000 retailers worldwide. Rick Tremmel, president of Notions Marketing, declined to comment for this story.

The fire

In early June, severe thunderstorms hit Western Michigan, including Grand Rapids, where Notions is headquartered, causing a multi-day power outage. When power was restored, an electrical surge sparked a fire in the company’s main building, a 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center. No one was injured, but extensive smoke damage contaminated the facility and a substantial amount of inventory. The Grand Rapids Fire Department told a local news channel they’d determined that it was accidental, noting the damage patterns and a piece of equipment that showed signs of burning from the inside out.

History of the business

Notions Marketing was founded in the late 1930s as a family-owned business distributing school supplies and toys to variety stores and drug stores, and grew into one of the largest wholesale distributors of craft supplies. In 2023, Notions Marketing was acquired by Nicole Craft Brands, the company that previously owned mass-market craft retailer AC Moore. It closed AC Moore in 2019. In 2023, Nicole Craft acquired UK-based Tonic Studios, and in 2025 it acquired American Crafts. Nicole Craft also owns Bazzill and Colorbök premium paper brands, and EK Success, a scrapbooking supplies business. When Joann filed for bankruptcy in 2025, Notions Marketing filed a claim for $471,888.86.

Post-fire communications

After the fire in June, Notions paused all shipping and website orders, and on June 28 laid off approximately 200 employees, including office and warehouse staff and remote workers, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) posted on the Minnesota Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s website. “On June 22, 2026, we were informed that there is no timeline in which we may be able to resume safe operations in that warehouse,” stated Lyndsey Beckmann, Senior Director of Human Resources, in the notice. The company encouraged employees to find positions elsewhere.

In a letter to customers in late June, CEO of Nicole Craft, Anthony Piperno, wrote, “I can assure you that we will return to operations down the road and will be stronger than ever,” but the timeline for recovery is not clear. The company has expressed intent to work through the insurance claims and return operations eventually, but no new communication has gone out to vendors or customers. The Notions Marketing website has the same brief announcement, which mentions severe weather but not a fire, on its homepage since June. There’s been no further official communication from Notions Marketing to vendors or retailers since June.

Typical timeline for commercial fire insurance claims

Commercial fire claims can take between three and six months in fairly straightforward cases. Complex commercial losses involving business interruption, like what happened to Notions, can take much longer. Insurers have to assess smoke and soot contamination, value lost inventory, and calculate lost revenue during the disruption. It’s entirely possible for the process to stretch into a year or more.

The fire caused smoke damage in the company’s main building, a 1.2-million-square-foot distribution center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Challenges for the industry

The shutdown has created restock and fulfillment challenges for independent retailers and affiliated brands. “We’ve ordered supplies from them for years to round out our art supplies and backup for needles and hooks,” said Amelia Freeman-Lynde, owner of Freeman’s Creative, an independent craft shop in Durham, North Carolina. “It’s been hard to find sources for many of the products we used to get from them.”

“It’s strange and unsettling to vendors that the company is not communicating with us at all regarding the future,” said Jason Prater, President of Sulky of America, a thread company. “At a minimum, they could let us know how the insurance settlement is progressing and what their intentions are one way or another. Regarding ongoing business, they have not even asked us to drop ship to their customers for them. That seems telling to me.”

Business changes before the fire

Aaron Leventhal, who served as CEO of Hero Arts, a stamping and scrapbooking company, from 2007-2024, notes the important role that Notions Marketing played in helping to grow this sector. “Notions carried every single Hero Arts product, and they’d order a lot of each one. This helped us to forecast, and to be more efficient, and it helped us with cash flow,” he said. “Notions was an unsung hero, providing the unseen scaffolding that allowed for the growth of so many small businesses.”

Leventhal noted, however, that after the Nicole Crafts acquisition, the business eroded some. Notions began only carrying a selection of their total assortment rather than all new releases. “The selection at Notions declined and with it an erosion of reliability and trust.”

Rosanna Diggs, who owns an online embroidery supplies shop, noted a similar trend. “They had a robust selection of what I needed, and back in 21-22 they would special order,” she recalls. “My sales rep constantly changes now; prices inched up. I get the impression they became more profit-driven than people-driven.”

“I used to order from them a lot,” says Robin Brisson, owner of Appleberry Fabrics in Winchendon, Massachusetts. “They were my go-to for all notions, buttons, stitchery kits and threads and sometimes fabrics.” She noticed that in the last few years, they had stopped carrying many of the ribbon and button lines she previously bought. Brisson had sought out new suppliers, even before the June fire.

“To come back, they’d need to rebuild trust with retailers, especially around reliability and diversity of assortment,” noted Leventhal. “It will be tough to start again. There will be concerns about smoky or water-damaged products. And the service was already slipping.”

Abby Glassenberg

Co-founder