In a letter sent to WeaveUp sellers today company president, Flint Davis, said that WeaveUp has been acquired by national craft retailer JOANN.
JOANN became a customer of WeaveUp’s in 2017, using the platform to launch MyFabric (now simply called customizable fabric), a print-on-demand fabric service available on the JOANN website. JOANN made an investment in WeaveUp in 2019. At that time, Davis told Insider, “As digital textile printing continues to disrupt the $147B traditional printing industry, we see tremendous opportunity to reshape product development, supply chains and market responsiveness for brands and manufacturers in the textile industry.”
Independent artists can upload their patterns to the WeaveUp platform to sell directly to consumers. Those patterns were automatically imported to the MyFabric platform. For the first two years, though, the patterns were for sale on the JOANN website without artist attribution. In the summer of 2021 many artists demanded that their names be listed, and JOANN finally added artist attribution in October 2021.
In today’s letter, Davis wrote that JOANN’s acquisition “became the natural conclusion of a long and cooperative relationship.” The letter went on to say, “Please know that this tighter relationship between our companies we will have the resources to make our platform even more successful for our artists.”
Davis concluded by saying there are “big plans” for the WeaveUp platform and “exciting new opportunities for our independent artists” to come.
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.
What an achievemt !! , paying designer 0.05 to 0.07 cents as commission for a swatch sale JoAnn weaveup should be praised . Also for selling / sharing digital library with companies and keeping designers in dark and giving no attribution and paying commissions without any talk or elaboration about what sold and at what rate , offcourse weaveup needs to be praised . Giving no attribution to original designers their so called partners sometimes even gave attribution to recolor artist and when questioned the partner even blocked the original designer . This merger happened probably because spoonflower was acquired by Shutterfly . Weaveup never had any site sales . They shared library with their partners in Australia and India to name a few and the fabric was printed there and designers never knew the rate of commissions. THE lesser said the Better done . Congratulations
The first name was “my fabric materialised” as materialized is the Australian partner ,then it became my fabric . Now customizer . The fabric quality at JoAnn extremely poor and customer service bad as in comment section of one article on this site it self . Adding link of that post here will save few new designers from being deceived . Your site should be more informative for designers .
Hi, Are you referring to this article: https://craftindustryalliance.org/we-try-joanns-new-print-on-demand-fabric-service-myfabric/ We do link to it within the post.
JoAnn never funded weaveup it’s the designers 🙈😜😲
WeaveUp did receive a Series A round from JOANN. The amount was not disclosed.
I wonder what the quality of the fabric these designs are printed on?
In our article here, the writer assesses the fabric quality: https://craftindustryalliance.org/we-try-joanns-new-print-on-demand-fabric-service-myfabric/
While I am no longer submitting designs to WeaveUp, I will be curious to see how this goes. I have friends who already have designs up for sale on JoAnns.
They do have attribution but are not sure what the percentage will be for their design if there is a sale.
It should be in their TOS but they were not even aware their designs had been included on the actual site yet.
I will not be going back to WeaveUp or to JoAnns, but I am interested in knowing what happens.
Thank you for the update.
What bothered me about WeaveUp was that one designer seemed to get their work immediately uploaded for sale …hmmm … this person would have every color way that they could think of for a particular pattern, and would pounce on a trend, within a day or two, you’d see them put out 12 or more designs, and in other colorways. That takes a lot of space on a person’s flash drive. These designs are sometimes 10MBs, or more. And if you have a complete fabric yardage, or a duvet cover, those files are over 25MBs sometimes.
Plus, as a designer, you had to bust yourself to “try” and get picked, having to format your art, again, to a new type of file format, and format the size, too. Meanwhile, the person mentioned in the above paragraph would fill the “new” category almost immediately, any given day.
The sizing and format …These companies need to realize that every company should be somewhat consistent in sizing requirements. Yes, I know that .tiff is a valid format, but when one company asks for a design to be formatted one way, and the next company asks for another format, it can be stressful to manage,. You can’t ask a designer to alter their work, again, just for your machine’s requirements, and then say, “Oh, and your design has to be new to market, and can’t have sold on other sites, even though it sells on other print on demand sites in another file format.
I feel like Joann is trying to cut designers from making a living. Most fabric designers know that you don’t make much from fabric licensing, which is why its important to not put all your eggs in one basket, and diversify. I was all for them to compete against Spoonflower, and having custom printed fabric would cut down on inventory waste, but at least we designers get paid on Spoonflower and Zazzle.
Thankfully they didn’t ask for exclusive designs. I would have never gone there in the first place if they did. I am also on zazzle and spoonflower and theirs are not exclusive either.
Confused a bit by your comment about taking up space on a flash drive. I am sorry but I couldn’t figure what you meant about that part.
Having to make new sizes and the color indexing was also something I really didn’t care for in submitting. But I did learn a new skill by having to do it.
Hi Denise and Abby. Thank you Abby for letting us all reply.
Basically, what I should’ve said was that, as artists, who do textiles or any kind of repeat design, we know that we have large files, for many of these designs that repeat, where we’ve been accustomed to being required that a file in repeat be a certain way, in layers, etc. We know that they are so large, and that we have to keep a copy, so we back up designs, or keep copies, on flash drives. The thing that gets me, is that WeaveUp, and there have been others, who have to be different, and say, “Oh, well, we need “this” type of file format”. And so we as artist have to make more variations, which, in turn, to make more files, requires more space, putting us out financially, to have go a buy more usb drives, or have more storage, that we could use for other things, not knowing that the file will be accepted.
And I totally agree with you, Designer, on all the things you’ve said. I noticed certain things, too, and felt that that person was being favored, as a designer, wondering why mine weren’t being picked, even though I’d tweak popular selling designs, just get fit their format.
And in thinking all that, I wonder if this person’s designs will still be favored.
I was all for Joann competing against Spoonflower, thinking well, they may have more money to back them to invest, plus the talk with Joann going public on the stock exchange, would maybe help. However, we all know going into Joann’s that they don’t staff well enough, and are known for being frugal. I just hoped that that wouldn’t transfer to artists wanting royalties for their work.
oh okay. I don’t use flash drives for storage, I use external drives that will hold up to 4TB of files. They are not terribly expensive and are easy to transfer. sorry I misunderstood.
Quality of fabric and fabric types for both companies is different . Weaveup upload page clearly says PNG or Tiff both are acceptable but their Madam Curator would reject png format ..She would even reject designs on her whims and fancy as she feels she knows everything . She simply refuses to understand what computer pixels are . She wants to groom designers so that she can creat a library suitable for materialized and other partners.she cleverly would change original artworks and make her own patterns .she has maximum designs uploaded by doing this in her own name .in case of one designer whose polka patterns were selling a lot she changed the layout a bit and started selling that .in another designer she ripped off the stripes and created another stripe pattern . She works with several names on the same site and is a employee of weaveup but would not let designers get in touch with management
I could never say for sure that the polka dots were exactly like mine, so I won’t let that be stated as a fact.
if you can edit please remove that part, thanks.
Myself Rachna , joined weaveup after they cameup in search results of Google . I was on Zazzle but my fabric designs didn’t sell there and i was looking for a outlet to sell my library of 700 designs or so that were with me as i started my career as textile designer in 1986 . For me Ms Rana was my weaveup contact in 2017 if i remember. I joined them since there was no payment for test swatchs . But for one year there was no sales . Then their partners started buying and in second year i sold twice but one sale was for usd 350 and other for usd 200 . Again similar sales in third year .then i got a email that my designs have been selected by joann so being uploaded there .this is where the problem started .they changed the product description and removed my name from design name and in description . And no attribution on JoAnn site . I raised the issue and sent a email to president but reply came from Rana that they will not remove my name but they did it and more than 500 designs became property of JoAnn . I joined spoonflower and one of the makers reported my design as ripoff from JoAnn . I then asked weaveup to remove my designs and with lot of problems they removed from their site but not JoAnn so i had to continuously keep asking them and then i sent email to JoAnn that they are using my designs without consent as i never authorised any one to share my design library without my name or change the names of my designs . After this my library was removed . weaveup after this again shared designs on an Indian site and again many were attributed to “colorist” who is another name Ms Rana Which she uses to recolor the designs . I contacted Materialized also as some off my designs were attributed to them . As usual they all said it’s a mistake .all designs then were removed . This Indian site then created a fake profile and added many designs there from weaveup so that they would not have to pay commission.best part few of them were originals from materialized and valley forge fabric
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I then informed the companies and they got this Indian company remove the fake profile. You can Abby understand the gravity of situation .Selling library or sharing library without even checking the company properly how risky it is . The company can make another ompany and use designs and sell them . So weaveup misused our designs and sold themself to JoAnn . The owners of weaveup made big money but designers were CHEATED . Most designers don’t even know that their designs are floating on Indian sites .
I am td by weaveup that for 2 years from date of deletion they will be holding my designs as per conditions but they have not followed any rules and betrayed my trust .
Rachna, that’s horrible what they did to you! That’s why I love Abby’s and CIA’s sites, because they have clout in the industry, and bring awareness to these issues. Hopefully, the powers that be in the companies Joann, WeaveUp, and the the ones that you mentioned, see these comments, and are held accountable, and/or fix this problem.
Denise, I want to invest in the external drives, the passport drives, the ones that are 1TB size and up, correct? Yes, I want one of those. I’m always worried about the the thumb drives, as they stick out so much and once false move, and …oops. Almost lost info on a thumb drive, when my laptop fell off the ottoman. Ugh. Thank G*d nothing happened. Definitely going to look into an external drive.
This is the brand we use
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-my-passport-usb-3-0-hdd#WDBYVG0010BBK-WESN
I don’t know much about tax system in USA as i am based in India but if someone cares to read comments on last post linked here there is a comment about TAX deduction not done by weaveup or some form not given by weaveup . Usa based designers should seek clarification because after merger it may be difficult to get clarifications. I got commissions whic was included in my earnings in india and i payed tax on them in india .FOR information
I earned 2140 USD from weaveup .first commissions were in Jan 2018 and my first objection was the same day as to rate of commission quantity sold and the response was “we are making site more designer friendly” never happened till my last sale after removal of designs was paid on FEB 28 but weaveup never made site designer friendly .
I am a retired former high end furniture and textile showroom owner/manager in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. I also am a photographic artist. About three months ago I started uploading uploading tiff images, first from my photography portfolio and now I am using Adobe Illustrator to create vector designs. In the past 3 months I have uploaded more than 500 images. To date apparently none of them have made it through curation. I googled Rana and then tried communicating with her through Linked In. Does anyone have her corporate email?
Thank,
Lucien P Perrodin
I recently learned of the acquisition after trying to access my account on Weaveup.com. I contacted them and they told me to contact Joan for my account information.
I feel that there should have been some communication from weave up before he transaction. I need access to my information does anyone know how to get this resolved. I had a great deal of information on that site and did not want to have it passed on without my knowledge.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-02/crafts-chain-joann-joan-is-planning-a-bankruptcy-filing-giving-lenders-control
Please advise how we get to WeaveUp site now. I was an artist but the site has since been closed.
Violet, I am afraid you cannot access them any more. I tried for nearly a month to help a friend in Germany get paid. I tried to contact the former contact service people. I called and emailed the Better Business Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, local newspapers, and the new parent company of Joanns.
I found the building was up for sale and could not get any information from any one to help. I don’t believe there is any way to contact them now.
Thank you Denise
also many of the former staff have moved on to other jobs. They did not return my emails either.