Missouri Star Quilt Company has acquired UK-based knitting and crochet pattern marketplace and ecommerce retailer, LoveCrafts. The deal was private and the terms were not disclosed, although Sky News reports that the deal was valued in the tens of millions of pounds. The acquisition will greatly expand Missouri Star’s holdings in the yarn industry.
LoveCrafts
LoveCrafts was founded in 2012 by Edward Griffith and two co-founders who met in college and had worked together at Boston Consulting Group. Over the last 14 years, the company raised tens of millions in venture capital and debt financing, an eight-figure sum in total, including from Highland Capital Partners, Balderton Capital, and Scottish Equity Partners among others.
LoveCrafts is a marketplace where over 8,000 independent designers sell knitting and crochet patterns. It also sells yarns for knitting and crochet, both its in-house brand Paintbox, and other yarn brands. Initially, the company hosted niche websites for each craft, starting with LoveKnitting and LoveCrochet. In 2019, the decision was made to streamline the URLs into a single LoveCrafts brand.
In early 2021 LoveCrafts acquired Massachusetts-based WEBS yarn shop, one of the largest brick-and-mortar and ecommerce yarn stores in the US. WEBS operates online under the URL yarn.com. WEBS was a second-generation family-owned business. It launched its yarn brand, Valley Yarns, in 2008 and, in 2018, acquired the yarn brand Tahki Stacy Charles.
Since the LoveCrafts acquisition, customers have reported on Reddit that the quality of the service has declined and that the stock levels at WEBS are inconsistent. Kathy Elkins, part of the family that originally owned WEBS, declined to comment for this story.
According to Sky News, growth has stalled since the pandemic and the main shareholders are said to have been unwilling to inject more money into the business.
In 2022, LoveCrafts acquired the digital patterns and yarn stock of Deramores, a UK-based ecommerce retailer that was closing after a decade in business.
So, altogether, LoveCrafts owns three yarn brands, a digital pattern marketplace, two large ecommerce sites, and one of the largest brick-and-mortar yarn stores in the US – an impressive portfolio of yarn-focused businesses.
Missouri Star
Missouri Star is one of the largest quilting suppliers in the world and has, until now, just dipped its toe into the yarn sector.
At the end of 2020, it opened One Big Happy Yarn Co., a brick-and-mortar shop at its home base in Hamilton, Missouri, along with ecommerce and instructional video content focused on knitting and crochet. One Big Happy sells yarn shop quality yarns and kits. Earlier this year, the One Big Happy website was folded into the Missouri Star brand.
Founded in 2008 by Jenny Doan and her family, Missouri Star pairs instructional videos on YouTube with ecommerce and has grown into a massive quilting retailer. The company has revived the once abandoned downtown of Hamilton, Missouri, renovating buildings and opening a total of 15 shops and a retreat center. Hamilton is now often referred to as “the Disneyland of quilting.”
It also has a record of acquiring established craft companies. Under the parent company, Creativity Inc., it acquired Let’s Make Art from founder Sarah Cray in 2017, then earlier this year sold it back to her.
In the spring of 2020, Missouri Star acquired Nancy’s Notions, the iconic quilting company founded by PBS star Nancy Zieman. Missouri Star’s Jenny Doan shared similarities with Zieman as televised sewing educators with a strong retail accompaniment and community focus. After Zieman sold the company to Tacony Corporation in 2003, customers reported that the quality and service at Nancy’s Notions had declined. Nancy’s Notions continues to have its own URL separate from Missouri Star.
The acquisition
According to Griffith, Al Doan, one of Jenny Doan’s children and a co-founder and board chair of Missouri Star, visited LoveCrafts in London in 2019. Griffith traveled to Hamilton that year as well. The companies identified a synchronicity in mission and vision around the core concepts of content, commerce, and community.
The acquisition of LoveCrafts allows Missouri Star to enter the yarn sector in a big way and all at once, although it’s not clear what the future will hold for the various parts of the LoveCrafts business.
The future
Jeff Martin, CEO of Creative Fiber Holdings, the parent company of Missouri Star stated in a press release, “This acquisition aligns perfectly with our mission to inspire and support crafters worldwide. At Missouri Star, we’ve always believed in the power of creativity to bring people together. With LoveCrafts joining us, we’re not just expanding our product line—we’re bringing together two passionate communities of makers.
“This union will allow us to serve makers in ways we’ve only dreamed of before. It’s an exciting new chapter in our mission to inspire and empower everyone to create.”
A core piece of LoveCrafts business is an independent pattern marketplace. (Since 2015 the site has integrated with Ravelry allowing designers to easily upload their patterns from Ravelry to LoveCrafts.) That’s a business model that, until now, Missouri Star hasn’t ventured into. In addition, Northampton, Massachusetts, the home of WEBS, is a vibrant, progressive college town very different, and far away, from Hamilton, Missouri.
Although it’s not clear what the plans for LoveCrafts will be, Griffith, who will be staying on for a period to help guide the company after the sale, is upbeat. “I like that Missouri Star has a sense of scale and ambition,” he said.
Abby Glassenberg
Co-founder
Abby co-founded Craft Industry Alliance and now serves as its president. She’s a sewing pattern designer, teacher, and journalist. She’s dedicated to creating an outstanding trade association for the crafts industry. Abby lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
I loved the old Webs yarn store. And they had excellent mail order options and service. I hope that comes back.
Webs had a great reputation for weavers, spinners, knitters and crocheters.
Webs used to have a fabulous inventory. Lately they are out of so many yarns all the time.
It’s a rapidly changing market. As we are seeing the change of ownership in many businesses in our community, I see this as a continuing trend. I am close to the backend buzzing of community sales and mergers, before announcements are made public and even when they will not be public knowledge. We need to keep an eye out for our small businesses. artists, creators, etc. and collaborate to have power in numbers. It’s not competition, it’s survival. Let’s help keep the American Dream alive.
I totally agree with you, having been in the retail industry for many years. We are losing our brick and mortar stores and small businesses at an alarming pace, which I do not see changing. Unfortunately for many reasons, online business is the way of the world.
Sue B
I also loved the original Webs and knew Barbara and Art Elkins, the founders. It was an excellent resource and supplier and I, too have noticed a steady decline in service quality and item availability. I’ve always been a Webs customer but lately have been forced to turn to Amazon to get needed supplies because Webs has been out of stock – now I know why. So very sad to see a once great company decline so badly.
Halcyon Yarn has what I need that Webs used to have.
WEBS was a great standalone before being acquired by LoveCrafts. I also loved their discount. I doubt I’ll being doing any shopping with Missouri Star as their markup is high and last time I checked no discount.
Good riddance to the current ownership. Hopefully the new team will respect those they do business with and pay them as they should.
Sounds like a step in the right direction for Webs. I’ve bought from Missouri star and been pleased with their customer service. Hopefully that will spread to Webs.
I’ve shopped for fabrics at Missouri Star for years and loved the service. Hopefully the service and selection of yarns will be of the same quality service and product. Keep me posted about the yarns and kits and patterns. Lovely town and stores.
I’ll be interested to see how this develops. I use LoveCrafts for yarn purchases (easy shipping to the EU) and affiliate links. But I don’t know that I’d call their independent pattern marketplace a core part of their business – my experience with them leaves me thinking otherwise.
I helped LoveCrafts develop their pattern marketplace way back when, and then when VATmoss came along, helped both Ravelry and LoveCrafts with their integration and testing. Yet despite countless meetings with them, where myself and other indie designers expressed concern about the poor UX backend for designers, and despite offering plenty of free advice to keen ears in the designer team, the developers paid virtually no interest – suggesting to me that the pattern marketplace was a low priority, unless it was a free pattern that could sell them yarn.
Earlier this year I pulled my entire pattern catalogue from the LoveCrafts website. I’ve recently upgraded all of my patterns yet uploading and updating a single pattern on the LC site is a chore, and the low volume of sales simply wasn’t worth investing the time or money into updating nearly 400.
If Missouri Star want to develop that side of things further, they have a lot of work ahead of them.
Can they please buy Fancy Tiger Crafts too? 🙂
WEBS was a great standalone before being acquired by LoveCrafts. I also loved their discount. I doubt I’ll being doing any shopping with Missouri Star as their markup is high and last time I checked no discount.
As the bigger companies swallow up the market, quilters and knitters are killing their local stores by buying online. Shop local if you want your locality to have shops. Saving a penny might cost losing the shop you love.
I still purchase from Webs, but I have a bigger inventory than they do!
I also shop at Fabulousyarns, The Websters, The Loopy Ewe, The Lamb Shoppe, and many others! I shop where I can find the yarn.