Jimmy Beans Wool announced today that the company has been acquired by Local Crafts (formerly Premier Needle Arts), a division of the private equity firm Blue Point Capital Partners. Jimmy Beans is a purveyor of yarn, tools, and patterns for knitting and crochet. The terms of the agreement were not made public.
Jimmy Beans Wool history and growth
Founded in 2002 by software engineers Laura Zander and her husband, Doug Zander, Jimmy Beans has evolved to become one of the largest retailers of yarn in the US. The company is based in Reno, Nevada.
Jimmy Beans began in Truckee, California, originally selling both coffee and yarn. The company was early to e-commerce. It began selling yarn online in 2002 when buying anything online was still fairly rare, including craft supplies.
In 2014, Jimmy Beans was a featured case study in the New York Times. In that series, Zander explained how the company had explored expansion into fabric and quilting as a growth strategy, but sales flattened. Zander decided to double down on yarn.
Jimmy Beans has instead grown through acquisition. In 2018, the company acquired the project bag business Namaste and, in 2019, another bag business, della Q. The company has acquired several yarn brands, including perhaps most significantly indie yarn company Madelinetosh in 2019 which was, at that time, the largest hand-dyed yarn producer in the US. It brought Shibui Knits into the Madelinetosh brand and acquired Dream in Color and Simply Shetland, two other yarn brands. Jimmy Beans also launched its own patented product, SmartStix, a combined knitting needle and tape measure, and a brand of eco-friendly wool products called Yarn Citizen.
In the fall of 2022, Jimmy Beans moved into a new 20,000 square foot headquarters. The Reno shop is a tourist destination attracting visitors from all over the world. It also owns a 30,000 square foot yarn dyeing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, where Madelinetosh was originally based. According to its website, Jimmy Beans had 75 employees split between the two locations, although there have been layoffs since the sale went through earlier this week.
In February, Zander was named USA Today’s Woman of the Year for Nevada. She will join Crafts Group’s executive team as Chief Brand Officer.
Local Crafts’s acquisitions
Local Crafts specializes in lower middle market acquisitions of quilting, sewing, knitting, and crochet products sold direct-to-consumer through ecommerce and independent retail stores. Blue Point typically invests in businesses that generate between $30 million and $300 million in revenue.
According to the Blue Point Capital website, post-transaction Local Crafts works to “improve supply chain management to increase margins and reduce working capital” in the companies it acquires.
Jimmy Beans will be added to Local Crafts current portfolio of companies, which includes Superior Threads, KnitPicks, WeCrochet, Connecting Threads, Superior Threads, and Berroco (which it acquired in 2021). With the acquisition of Berroco and now Jimmy Beans, Local Crafts is growing the portion of its portfolio that services independent local yarn stores.
This acquisition can be viewed as the latest in a series of industry consolidations. In addition to Local Crafts rollup of brands, late last year, Missouri Star, the largest quilt retailer in the US, acquired WEBS, the largest yarn retailer.
Zander, who turned 50 this year, recently told the Reno Gazette Journal, “I really hope that I’m inspiring up-and-coming female business owners and showing that you can run a profitable business with integrity in an area that you’re really passionate about.”
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 get so scared seeing all these great brands acquired by private equity. That’s at least partially why Joann’s is closing down. Eeeek.
Yep
We have to juice the craft industry time to get craft/woodworking/metal shop back into the school system. There was a time when every large department store had a sewing/ yarn department.
I learned to machine sew in junior high. My father’s side of the family had a lot of crafty women. We need to add crafts back to schools for stress reduction and to off of phones.
Definitely scary. I hope things don’t change too much.
All my LYS’s went out of business. I learned to knit at one of their classes. Hopefully JBW will be around a long while. Although I’m not thrilled with this years crochet blanket club. It’s beautiful but the pattern (at least the first month) is too difficult for easy relaxing crochet. Even for a 40 year crocheter.
I agree!!
I hate that so sad I haven’t heard good things since the acquisition.
These large mergers actually make me want to avoid shopping at them. When Love Crafts purchased Webs the quality went south and when they moved to the same web template/platform I hated it. The old Webs site was solid and they used to provide more information on the yarn pages then they do now. I used to spend hundreds of dollars a year on Webs and now its zero. Nothing is ever in stock and its a lot of acrylic yarns. I used to buy a lot of Berroco yarns as well but I don’t think the quality is as good as it used to be, and I hardly have any of their yarns anymore. Now I look for smaller women run yarn companies where the quality is top notch and prices are fair considering the value. Curious what others think.
I totally agree.
I absolutely agree with you. When private equity firms run the show, the focus is, as they said on this page, ‘to increase margins and reduce working capital’, which means layoff employees, use cheaper materials and make more money for share holders. What a shame.
I try to do the same and agree.
Michelle, I work in a LYS and I agree with you about these mergers. We have been buying Berocco yarns for years and I do not think that their quality has slipped at all. I think that the experience of shopping in person is the best!
Enshitification. And the tariff problem. Good thing I have ‘stable’ stash.
It’s a thing.
With layoffs already i worry that Jimmy Beans is heading downhill.
You failed to mention the selling price . That’s poor reporting.
Private equity is killing American businesses. We have only to look at what recently happened to Joann.
In a private sale, the terms are not disclosed.
PhotoGirl – she mentions in the first paragraph of the story that terms were not made public. Perhaps read all the words before you trash someone?
I hate to see it happen–Laura Zander selling out. Integrity? Whatever she had is now gone, bought and paid for by the highest bidder. Meanwhile, “improve supply chain management to increase margins and reduce working capital” means that Local Crafts (hah! what an oxymoron) will squeeze JBW and its collection of brands to extract all the cash, rationalizing (read: discontinuing) offerings and reducing the quality of what’s left. So much for reintroducing the beloved Shibui bases…I bet that’s the first thing to get the ax because having that little piece of supply chain in Japan will make no sense to the finance bros, who aren’t the least bit interested in what Shibui meant to yarn crafters. I have yet to see *any* industry *improved* by vulture I mean venture capitalists. Nowhere in Blue Point Capital Partners’ mission do they say a single word about quality, innovation, or serving (much less delighting) the consumer. If Laura thinks she’s going to protect what she built as the Chief Brand Officer, she’ll be disappointed–her new bosses are only interested in sucking cash from acquisitions to pass to their shareholders. Customers are completely irrelevant to that business model, as vividly demonstrated by Toys R Us and JoAnn.
Every word you wrote so true!!!! Well written and expressed!!!
Well said, couldn’t agree more
This is very disturbing. Once the equity firms take over, it’s not the same. I never got to my 2025 blanket. Was saving the yarn for when I have time. I think I’ll probably cancel. Can’t imagine they’ll care about the people, just the bottom line. Next thing, your emails will be answered by bots!
Absolutely not happy with this at all.
My feelings are we need to give it a chance prior to being negative. This may offer more to us as crafters. Laura Zander has her reasons for selling. The business may have grown beyond what Laura was interested in managing.
There’s nothing to stop y’all from becoming shareholders and then holding these private equity firms accountable and calling them on the carpet when they do counterintuitive things. Find ways to hold them accountable instead of complaining.
That’s not really accurate. The general partners run private equity firms and those positions are not available to outside investors. The limited partners invest in the private equity firm, but the starting investment for Blue Point Capital is $1 million dollars and you have to be an accredited investor. The general partners also don’t consult the limited partners.
Out of curiosity, what do you think PRIVATE in PRIVATE equity firm means? “Open to the general public”?
All these acquisitions were news to me. Now that there are no more knitting magazines and I don’t follow knitting social media stuff, I feel like I’m out of the loop. I’ve shopped at Webs for many years and wondered lately why they have such limited color choices. Now I get it. Also, I’ve been dropped from their daily email list and I’ve tried repeatedly to get back on but their customer service has been no help. In the past I’ve asked family members to buy me gift cards from Webs but guess that’s over.
It’s sad to see these changes.