Follow up on the Big 4 and printing issues

Thank you to all who responded to my last post. There is a lot to think about here.

For a start let's talk about the failure of the printing capabilities at the plant in Kansas.

I have to say I don't really buy this story. Here's why:

1. The malware/computer issue occurred in October. Any winter/holiday pattern collections would be well on their way then - and surely printed for shipment to the stores or ready for online direct customer orders. An October printing problem would impact the spring collections maybe, not winter or holiday.

Note too that Vogue and Kwik Sew was still able to produce slim collections - but were there ever any intention to offer winter/holiday collections for Butterick or McCalls? 

2. Assuming that there were some patterns for this season in the works in all pattern lines, what would be stopping the companies from making .pdf versions available so as not to lose market share? 

Since any patterns would be designed in CAD formats it should have in fact been easier to switch, even for the duration of the printing issue, to .pdfs than hold out for paper.

3. Where are the updates? Where is the customer relations? Do any of us really believe that a viable business could not get a software issue fixed within this time frame, particularly if not doing so would cost money?

What's with this crazy story that the computers wouldn't even turn on? Are these the only computers available on the planet? Are we to believe that these large pattern collections were not backed up and accessible from other machines (even I have my own stuff backed up on the Cloud). 

I have never worked in any office that did not back up the servers. If the printers still worked, and the problem as described was a software not a mechanical issue, then why couldn't the files be downloaded to new computers and sent to the printers? What century are we in?

This is how this whole story is feeling to me:

• the funds are not available or made available to fix the issues and get production going again. Obviously the cost benefit analysis of fixing the problem wasn't there. No one was losing much money if these idle printers just sat there.
• Butterick and McCalls are being fazed out anyway. This is a well timed exit strategy.

Further thoughts.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. In fact those folks make my head explode.

However I have common sense, most of the time, and hopefully can still add 2+2 and get 4. That's what I think I am doing here.

I have some sympathy for the company. After all this is exactly what happened to newspapers - an area I have worked in. Print newspapers, like print patterns I guess, stopped making financial sense years ago. In fact there is a town in Nova Scotia, Liverpool, that used to produce the newsprint for the Washington Post. That order was cancelled long ago and that plant, and much of the town, closed down too.

These things happen, times change. I get that.

But I am seeing something else at play here.

Not caring.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I know people who have retired once they knew they just didn't care as much any more (one was my old doctor who I give full credit for his honesty). I even know people who find it hard to care about anything much at all (my most horrifying moment of my teaching career was a student who when asked to write about something she cared about, said well I am not sure I am interested in or care about anything).

Let's be honest we have all reached the point at some time in our lives when we stopped caring about something that used to matter. Often this is a good thing, if what we cared about a lot, if for example, what was what other people think. But it is a terrible thing to have a business or an occupation where you really don't care about the product. How does it feel to acquire a line you don't have much interest in, or have customers for that line that don't really matter to you? Tires, or shovels or sewing patterns, it's all the same to you.

That's what the Big 4 feel like to me these days, like they don't care anymore.

Which is too bad, because when it comes to sewing, I still do.

A lot.

BTW thanks to Vintage Sewing Patterns for posting the link. It was nice to see good pattern design again.

The changing world of patterns

I am starting this post with a picture from from Vogue's new spring collection.

Now where do we start with this one? 

Anyone have an iron? 

Look at those hems. Look at that unpressed tie. Look at where the shoulders fit, or rather don't, on this poor girl who has every right to be as fed up as she looks.

I mean who in their right mind would wear this get up but more to the point, this was something that was sewn! What would you think if you had made this and this was what you saw in the bathroom mirror when you went to try it on?

It's time we all faced the new reality. 

The pattern companies, the Big Four are just not what they once were. A lot of things aren't anymore of course. I am OK with that, and with change. You can't expect some for profit company, or in this case companies, to just continue to knock themselves out because we find it so reassuring to have access to the resources we are used to.

This month the Big Four, yes that's right all the large pattern companies, were bought by one British outfit that sells wrapping paper and greeting cards. Clearly the pattern companies are loosely related in a retail, they might be sold in similar stores sort of way, but the pattern companies are just another commodity, a line in this context.

Under this new system don't be expecting any revisions of those nutty pattern instructions that tell us still to staystitch knit necklines and sew all T shirt seams twice on a straight stitch. 

Don't be expecting and revisions to the sizing charts that still think some women have 32" hips or that a woman's waist is always 10" smaller than her bust. 

And don't be expecting all four pattern companies (and we should probably also include New Look, Kwik Sew and probably printed Burda into the mix as they would be included in the sale) to be maintained as separate identities, approaches to clothes or levels of complexity. 

And don't be expecting someone with taste to come into work at the pattern department any time soon either.

The way I see it if they have unplugged the irons at Vogue all bets are off. 

Now don't get me wrong. 

Some of my favourite TNTs came from the Big Four. Just not lately. I used to be beside myself with excitement when I got an email that a new season's patterns were out (but the way Butterick hasn't released a new collection since the fall) but now when I get around to having a look, all I can think of is who would wear that?

It's not really that they dropped the ball.

The times just caught up with companies that produced masses of paper patterns and shipped them out to stores who would pull them from the catalogues four times at least a year and dump those "discards" in the garbage, or ship them back to the company. 

It takes a lot of women sewing, and a lot of sewing/fabric brick and mortar stores, and a lot of not having any other options to sustain a system like that.

And that environment just doesn't exist anymore.

I have had some early indicators on this whole situation.

 F+W Media, who owned Burdastyle, Interweave Press, Sew News and a bunch of other well known enterprises, went into bankruptcy this year. I was actually, without knowing it, one of their creditors. I got a letter in the mail every month all last year or so saying that I was on the list to get paid but don't hold my breath. 

I had recorded a series of Burdastyle webinars a couple of years ago and I was supposed to be paid something every time someone took the course. That hadn't happened in so long I sort of forgot about it.

Burdastyle was recently picked up by a holding company of some kind. I noticed as a result that they were remaking the website in a more commercial way - with prominent add to cart icons for example.

I also noticed that for many of the patterns, information that was really useful to me, and was always on the old site, like technical line drawings, yardage requirements etc. was missing.

Now you know with any pattern, but particularly with those weirdly posed Burda fashion shots, if you can't see the line drawing you really don't know anything you need to know about that pattern.

So I wrote them to say, more or less, what's up with that?

This morning, to their credit, I got a nice email back saying they have recently changed hands and it will take a while to get things up and running again, and offering me 10% off a pattern.

I am wondering now if that too is going to be another company that won't be giving me the patterns I want to sew.

Now this is not all a complaint. 

Pattern companies are not sewing. Needs change and really was throwing out all those paper patterns a good idea?

A person has to keep up.

I have a funny story to tell on this. 

When I was in Berkeley my DIL, who I really love, was getting ready in the morning and we realized we were out of coffee. I went into my Nova Scotia MIL routine and said immediately write me a list, I will go to the store for you, and bring back whatever you need. 

"No it's OK," she said." I have an app."

And she did too, ordered all the groceries with one hand on her phone. Done in 10 minutes. Everything was at the door by lunch, meat in ice packs even which we left outside with the boxes for them to pick up and recycle, being in Berkeley of course. 

Now this got me to thinking, once I had absorbed there was a mother-in-law app, how marvellous this was. I thought of my 92 year old mother in Winnipeg, of my own mother-in-law who needs to wait for someone to take her shopping, of the tired babies I see at the grocery stores at 9:00 on weeknight.

Keeping up is a good thing.

Which made me think that all changes are like coins, you turn them over and there is the opposite on the other side. My DIL is a very child centred person. Her app gives her more family time.

And the fading away of the pattern companies of my sewing life has been balanced by the direct and personal contact with Indie pattern designers. Ironically the end of something big has made room for something, many things, smaller.

And some of those Indies are really great - far more responsive, and dependent on good reviews actually, than the Big Four. Yes we have all sewn some real Indie duds but I notice those operators tend not to be around any more and there are many that are just so good.

 Stylearc, Jalie, Lovenotions, Megan Neilsen (mostly), Liesl and Company, the list keeps growing. Copy shop printing has liberated many of us from pdf taping and it's nice to work with good paper too.

So now, over to you.

What are your feelings about the changes in the pattern industry?