Disclosure: A company owned by Abby Glassenberg, a co-founder of Craft Industry Alliance, is listed as a creditor. Interweave published Abby’s now out-of-print book, The Artful Bird, in 2013.
F+W Media, the major craft publisher, has filed for bankruptcy. In the filing, CEO Gregory Osberg cites the decade long decline in the market for print magazines as a contributing factor. Since 2015, for example, the company’s subscribers have decreased from approximately 33.4 million to 21.5 million and the company’s advertising revenue has decreased from $20.7 million to $13.7 million. But that’s not the whole story.
Osberg also details a mismanaged effort to shift the company’s focus from media to ecommerce during that same time period. F+W invested in merchandise to sell online, leased warehouses, and spent money on marketing, fulfillment, and customer service, all of which was at what Osberg describes as “tremendous cost to the Company, both in terms of monetary loss and the deterioration of customer relationships.” The new F+W website is specifically mentioned in the filing as employing technology that “was unnecessary or flawed.” In 2018 F+W’s crafts division spent approximately $6 million on its ecommerce business to make only $3 million in revenue.
When an attempted restructuring in the spring of 2017 failed to improve the situation, the board of directors terminated the CEO and several other executives and appointed Osberg who determined that ecommerce was the company’s worst-performing channel. In order to shift away from ecommerce F+W went through two rounds of layoffs, decreasing the workforce by about 40%. Still, it wasn’t enough. Cash was set to run out by April 2018. F+W sold Keepsake Quilting for $2.45 million and Blade, a knife collector magazine and trade show, for $4.34 million, so they could continue to operate.
Still, revenue declined through the summer and cash was predicted to run out by October 2018. F+W sold the Martha Pullen brand and The Original Sewing & Quilting Expo to Hoffman Media for $1.54 million, again in an effort to stabilize the company’s cash position. They also moved fulfillment to a third party vendor and ramped up digital advertising. Although these efforts helped some, they weren’t enough and cash was again going to run out in the first quarter of 2019.
F+W is divided into two business lines: Communities and F+W Books. Communities include the magazines, websites, membership platforms, online learning, and ecommerce portions of the business. The Crafts Community is the company’s largest, representing approximately $32.5 million of the Communities’ total $67.7 million in revenue. The portfolio includes Interweave, Quilting Arts, Sew News, Knitscene Beadwork, Fons & Porter, among many others. F+W Books was established as a separate division in September 2018. It publishes new 120 books a year and has a backlist of 2,100 titles. Interweave, The Quilting Company, Krause Publications, SewandSo, and North Light are all imprints of F+W.
The company will continue to operate while trying to sell its assets, with the goal of selling F+W Books by the end of May and the Communities by the middle of June. If this effort is successful, new owners will be responsible for the future of the books and the communities. Proceeds of the sale would be used to pay off some of F+W’s debts; the company itself would likely cease to exist.
F+W was founded in 1913 in Cincinnati, Ohio as a publisher of magazines for farmers and writers. The company was owned by the Rosenthal family until 1999. A consolidated list of creditors, including many craft businesses, can be found here.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
I was one of the crochet designers that will never see my roalties paid on my garment design they picked up in 2018, that is still being sold on their site to this day! As a matter of fact they have raised the price they are charging for it twice now and they connected it to my Ravelry page.
So sad. Thank you for the update.
so sad (I’m on the list) hope they figure it out and continue with the quilt magazines!
Thanks for the link to the list of creditors, also including me. For some reason F+W had my address from prior to 2011. I was able to call Interweave and the nice young woman took the correct address (which was already in the Interweave.com website but somehow didn’t get updated in F+W) and sent it to Accounts Payable. Offering this info in case others find themselves in the same situation.
Do you have the link for creditors, please?
Anne, the last word in this article is a link to a pdf listing all the creditors. Just click it and you’ll get the list.
The link just brings one back to the article
Right, but the PDF of the list of creditors downloads onto your computer at the same time.
It’s a 543 page document (not a pdf, but you can save it as one). If one browser doesn’t work, try another.
The link is at the end of the article.
Thanks for the info on correcting the address. Mine was an old one as well.
Do you have the contact info for Accounts Payable? I emailed my editor but have not yet had a response. Thanks!
Interesting. I wonder what that means for people under contract who are not on the creditor list? I’m less than a week away from shipping them a quilt for an upcoming magazine but I am not listed.
I’ve been told that new work going forward (work performed after the bankruptcy filing) will be paid regardless.
I’d be inclined to ask them to pay for it up front or you might never see it again… usually they’re paid at the time of publication (I think) but I’m not sure I’d trust that given the circumstances.
I saw this coming the day the acquisition was announced, and wisely did not renew my subscription.
Thanks for keeping us updated. I just sent a check last month to start the Fons & Porter magazine. I am thinking that may not be fulfilled now.
Well this is really sad. And I wonder what will happen to the people (such as myself) that have paid up their subscriptions two years in advance.
I have submitted images for the last two years to “Splash” hardcover watercolor books. They took my money and I never heard back. I wonder what editor Rachel Rubin Wolfe has to say.
I found out about this just today. When Miniature Quilts went out of business I had just renewed and the money was gone. Someone posted a heartfelt “I sorry but I can’t go on” but I felt robbed nonetheless.
So sad as their publications have always been top notch and I have at times subscribed to a number of them from beading to weaving and enjoyed them all.
They cashed my check to renew Quilting Arts on Feb 19th. I wonder if I’ll see any magazines.
I am wondering the same thing for myself. My check was just sent before this date.
I am an author. The company owes me thousands of dollars in royalties. They were supposed to deposit in my bank on 2-28-19, but nothing. I am not on the creditor list. Why?
anyone who is owed money should contact a lawyer asap and file your claim
I found your name, Laurie. Page 156
Thank you for this timely article. I was just reading through the latest Spin Off magazine and noticed several full pages of self ads that should have been filled by paying advertisers. I knew things weren’t going well from that. This will be a sore loss to the community if they can’t find some other company willing to take it over.
That’s a very long list of creditors. Over 16,000! Very irresponsible. It’s sad for those who are owed money and who were counting on it to pay their own bills!
Awful! So glad Martha Pullen’s company and Sew Classic gotvout when they did. So sorry for all others it’s affecting.
Does this mean we aren’t going to be paid for work submitted? I’m on the list…
One of my Interweave emails this week had a link to this article: https://www.interweave.com/article/needlework/women-needlework-magazines-opportunity-recognition-income/
oh the irony!
exactly!
This is sad but it keeps happening. I have no magazine subscriptions right now and I love magazines!! But there is nothing out there that truly fits me. I’m 57 years young and I love a book or magazine in my hands. Computers were new on the scene when I graduated from high school in 1980. I have one, I use it, but I have fibromyalgia and I can’t sit in front of that thing for longer than 20 minutes. A tablet is fine for perusing Pinterest but I don’t enjoy reading from that thing. I’m an all around crafter, seamstress, with a bit of knitting, crochet, and paper crafts. The magazines I loved….Mary Engelbright’s Home Companion, Crafter’s Marketplace, Crafts and Things, McCalls patterns…all have gone by the wayside. There’s nothing out there that fits me. I’m still into fashion, love blending antiques with modern, classic, and farmhouse styles, I just became a grandma and can’t wait to ride roller coasters and craft with her someday. I love 80’s rock, 80’s and present day alternative music, as well as classical and the music of my parents generation….Andy Williams, Tom Jones, etc. I feel that my age group is severely underrepresented in the area of magazines. I now mainly buy British crafting magazines from Barnes and Noble. It helps that my mom was born in Scotland but the metric conversions are hard for me. I hope that someone will create a well rounded crafting magazine such as Britain’s “Love Crafting “ magazine (which is a once in awhile printed offshoot of their “Love Crocheting” magazine.)
What a shame, they had some of the best crafting magazines. So many titles (and sources of supplies) are going under during this recession, even though crafting itself is just as popular as ever.
I am one of their authors. How do we file to make sure we get paid our royalties?
You don’t need to do anything. Thos of us who are owed royalties are what’s called unsecured creditors and it’s unlikely that we will get paid.
Check to see if your name is on the creditors link at the end of the above article. If you are, you will likely be sent a “proof of claim” or some such form to fill out. If you aren’t, see Sarah Ann Smith’s comment above about contacting your publisher to update your accounts payable information. As I understand it, no action will be taken on royalties-due accounts now that bankruptcy has been filed. They are trying to do “business as usual” going forward, but I don’t have much confidence in the results of that. I am checking for news every day, but have no responses from the company. Their royalties email is a “noreply” address.
I will note that I did not receive my royalty check for the period from July-December 2018 and I’m hearing from several other authors who also didn’t receive theirs.
Thanks for sharing and I really hate to hear this. Like everyone else, we each have our reason for loving a particular magazine. It’s not the same reading on a computer screen.
this is such sad news – thanks for the update
The creditor link will not work for me.
Should you really be exposing the addresses (some of which may be homes) of indie designers? This would make me very uncomfortable were I one of them.
I *think* this is part of the bankruptcy filing, considered public record, that F+W had to provide to the courts.
that would be true. public information.
Deborah, The bankruptcy documents filed with the court has the creditors list with the contact information. That is required by the bankruptcy trustee. At some point in the process F+W’s attorneys are required to advertise in newspapers in each of the creditors major cities’ main newspaper. The advertisement must explain F+W’s plan and it should give the correct contact info for creditors to file a claim to request payment for what they are owed. There is a specific amount of time in which the creditors have to file a claim. It’s a basic. form type document that has to be submitted to the court. The bankruptcy trustee will work with F+W’s attorneys and the CFO/ to present a workable plan to be approved by the bankruptcy trustee who will then recommend that the court approve the restructuring plan. Creditors will get paid something. I’m sure it will not be the full amount owed, but they will get something. If you know people on the list it would be good to make them aware of this so they can file their claim within the allotted timeframes. Creditors can also request a copy of the filing from the court, but they will charge a fee . The best thing to do is to go online and read the fing and advertisements. It will be available on the website for the state F+W filed in. All of the filing is public information.
Hi Becky, My understanding is that authors are unsecured creditors. We don’t need to file anything and most likely will not get paid.
I am one of those indie designers whose home address is now publicly available due to this. Something I have worked hard to keep off the internet for years. I was more upset about that then the money I’m owed.
A pity as I was looking over their websites. They would have been trading with high overheads for a period of time and couldn’t trade out or diversify without incurring extra costs such as royalties ( unpaid as noted) That is a serious offense when royalties don’t get paid. I wonder how much of this company assets were stolen or made “to go under”?. Perhaps not mismanagement but due to dire non payments of royalties, non payments of work related costs in manufacturing and tax governed penalties.
Just a comment!
This is such a bummer and my heart goes out to those who are owed royalties and may never get them. I really hope someone takes over the Sew&So ecommence site, I frequently recommend it to my customers in the UK and EU as a great online source for needlework supplies.
I also have some downloadable cross stitch patterns for sale with Sew&So and wondering what to do next! It’s such a shame as it’s such a popular cross stitch supplier in the UK. Keeping my fingers crossed that I haven’t lost out too much on royalties.
Aren’t these the same people that forced Christopher Kimble out of America’s Test Kitchen?
Yes. When David Nussbaum left F+W he went to America’s Test Kitchen and promptly forced Christopher Kimball out: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/17/456378738/america-s-test-kitchen-founder-chris-kimball-leaves-show
I am on the creditors list, too. I JUST sent another contracted project to them, too! I know I’ll never see the money, but they now have two of my projects that I’d like to have back.
It’s interesting that in all the things they say they tried to save the company “improving quality” wasn’t one if them.
The quilting magazines have consistently been getting worse and worse (what they did with the new version of Quilty was shockingly terrible.) At this point each issue of any of their quilt pattern magazines is a collection of low quality patterns the seem designed only to sell fabric collections, not to be interesting or novel or challenging designs. It feels like paying for content that should be free on a fabric company’s website. Editorial content has decreased to the point of being non-existent in most of the magazines. I can get better quality articles and patterns online.
What did they expect would happen when they made the magazines worse in a market in which even great magazines struggle?
Their e-commerce site was also terrible in comparison to what else is out there. Did they not research their competition at all? Did they assume that people would necessarily flock to their site simply because of the brand? There was absolutely no reason at all to buy from them as opposed to any other site selling the same products. Unless someone was looking to pay more and get worse customer service.
Most anyone who tried to use their website could have told them it was a lousy design. I fail to see how a switch to e-commerce could be so expensive, and it is certainly not the reason for deterioration of the customer relationship. Poor customer service is. Ans e-commerce should be cheaper after perhaps a short transition period, since less labor is required for a sale, and a portion of the sales involve electronic rather than physical copies.
I use the Writers Digest websites and subscribe to the magazine. They are horrible and should have blended better to work together instead of several separate entities. Their customer service was always horrible and I’ve been bounced around because the left didn’t know what the right was doing. Very poorly managed, this could have been prevented.
Thank you for posting this. I was contemplating a subscription to The Quilting Company then remembered your article. I am going to take a wait and see attitude with all my subscriptions and not renew at this time. My Quilting Arts is due but will not renew. Maybe at a future date.
I’m on that list. I don’t understand how they are promising payment for March work and beyond, but they are. I don’t believe it and will be pulling out of current projects as of tomorrow.
Sad for the sake of all of us who are caught up in this mess…which is probably the majority of the sewing/craft world considering that they bought up everyone they could get their hands on (and have promptly done their best to put out of business).
Knew something truly bad was going down when they suddenly released Ellen March last Fall – you don’t axe the person who has been keeping that many balls in the air unless you’re getting desperate about salaries.
Just received my legal paperwork the other day. I would say “thankfully they don’t owe me much” but in reality my income from their online classes had already dropped dramatically. I had inquired a few times over the past couple of years as to why this was happening – at one point I was told that they were looking for a buyer. So the writing has been on the wall for some time.
I feel for the outstanding employees that I have worked with at F+W over the past several years. Truly some wonderful people who do not deserve this either. I am so done with these company executives who come in, buy everything they can overextending the company resources, and then walk away leaving everything in ruins. You can bet they have not suffered financially for all of their gross incompetence.
My work with Interweave and then F+W also brought me into contact with lots of great people working there and with them (like you, Katrina!). You’re right that the writing’s been on the wall for years. From the time they started calling themselves “a content & ecommerce company,” it struck me that they were sabotaging the content-generating operations on behalf of ecommerce, but that they were counting on having content to sell, which seems self-evidently nonsensical. And my pattern-design royalties gradually and unsurprisingly dropped to almost nothing.
Unfortunately it’s not just the company they leave in ruins, but much of the industry too, since their acquisition appetite had been ravenous.
Well said, Kevin. (Good to “see” you!!) My sentiments (and experience) exactly.
As a long time designer for F W media (including Stitch magazine) is it at all possible to reclaim the rights to the projects we designed for the company?
On another note, I am on the list of creditors. I went to the lawyers site – https://dm.epiq11.com/case/FWM/info and they have info on filing a claim which I plan to do.
I have a project in the latest issue of Sew News….
Thank you for the link. I, also, would love to get my rights back but have no idea how to go about setting that in motion.