The Sewing Place
Resources => Publications => Topic started by: Gernella on October 15, 2018, 11:56:23 AM
-
Just opened my magazine and seen they have been taken over by CSS Industries who own the Simplicity Creative Brand. Job losses in Stockport though, which is a shame, they were always very helpful.
At least we will get the chance to add money off Simplicity and New Look patterns. In my later sewing life I have not been a fan of Simplicity but had some good results with New Look.
-
Yes I think I saw something about the takeover a while back. It means that the Vogue/Butterick etc group pretty well has a monopoly on patterns apart from the indies.
Not good news about job losses in Stockport. Stockport has a nice historic market and Underbank area but, like so many, its town centre is dying on its feet. It lost its M&S recently and the new cinema building won an award for being the ugliest new building in Britain. There's an award you wouldn't want to win. Poor old Stockie! :'(
-
I'm never happy to hear anyone has been put out of work. :(
-
I think Sew Today has been losing subscribers over the past few years and I suppose this is a way of keeping the magazine going. I gave up my subscription some time ago as I found that the contents were becoming less and less relevant to me. It is always sad to think that people will be losing their jobs.
-
Stockport seems to be unaffected, it's the Havant office and warehouse that's being axed, sadly.
-
I don't suppose there are big numbers employed in Stockport but sad that anyone loses their job wherever it is. Digging round t'interweb I see that when the new parent company bought the McCall pattern company a couple of years back turnover from MCalls was over $30 million globally per annum. Patterns are big business!
-
I wonder how much of that we contributed? 0_0
-
About $29 million @toileandtrouble !
-
Judging by McCalls recent offerings, no-one other than teenagers will have been buying their patterns.
-
Not sure where I read it, but I'm sure I saw some pattern exchange/swap mentioned somewhere. I suppose we all have patterns bought because they were cheap, never used and never likely to be used.
-
McCalls do seem to aim at the younger end of the market, but they do have some nice offerings. I’m always a bit dubious about New Look because of their size ranges.
-
@Francesca - you are far nearer to being a teenager than I am! Enjoy being able to wear such clothes because the day comes faster than you might think when they become totally unsuitable.
The problem for me for the last couple of years has been that Butterick and Vogue also have had a dire shortage of anything desirable.
-
My question is this:
Where does a conglomerate end and a monopoly begin?
-
I can remember in the very distant past when I spent hours looking for a pattern and thinking most of them seemed old fashioned to me. At that time I used to finish up with Simplicity more often than not. Mind you the store, fabric at the top and had patterns in the basement, twice the size of the fabric bit. From memory 6 long rows, very similar to desks with the pattern books on. Doubt you would find that kind of set up now. Last time I bought a pattern from a shop was around 1993, one book of each of the big names balanced on the edge of the counter. Many a lunch hour I've wasted. So, on line pattern picking, that's my kind of progress.
-
The Sewdirect and Simplicity websites now seem to have been amalgamated under www.sewdirect.com. Let's see whether this improves anything! Of course the Simplicity pattern of the week at £2.95 has gone, alas.
-
I think I've deleted a link to my account with Sew Direct and can't find it. So I've had a look at the new site and I am not impressed.
Jumps around like a cat on hot coals, if you specify a particular brand you seem to get everything and I don't want to wade through their entire catalogue before I get to what I want. If you specify 'tops', you get everybody's tops and I don't want to wade through sludge. May be it's just me being miffed (and grumpy) because it has changed, I got on very nicely with the other site and when something works well I don't like change.
Oh and another hate that a lot of sites do, you are looking at something and suddenly a box drops with information you don't want.
P S What we want on this site is a grumpy cat on the above icons.
-
I've only looked at it on my phone so far @Gernella but I was able to pull down a menu with brand names and pattern types within it.
-
I too seem to have deleted, or been deleted from, the account with the Sew Direct website. All I'm subscribed to is the electronic newsletter.
I've recently been thinking that I haven't had a Sew Today magazine for a while. so I've just checked my bank account and the quarterly Direct Debits were taken 4/12 2017 and 2/3/18 and nothing since! I think I might just cancel that DD instruction with the bank, and then if/when I decide to subscribe again I'll try with a different email address and maybe get another couple of freebie patterns. Hmmm!
-
I have just commented on this on SewingJ's thread.
-
You have to go in via the three dot menu. Then you get brands, categories etc
First I tried clicking on Vogue, got 'best sellers', which seems a pointless category to me, looked at skirts and got a mishmash.
Some pictures too big for my screen. Enormous banner at the top which is pretty useless. Ordering looks a bit of an improvement but haven't tested it yet.
-
I've recently been thinking that I haven't had a Sew Today magazine for a while. so I've just checked my bank account and the quarterly Direct Debits were taken 4/12 2017 and 2/3/18 and nothing since! I think I might just cancel that DD instruction with the bank, and then if/when I decide to subscribe again I'll try with a different email address and maybe get another couple of freebie patterns. Hmmm!
Well it's taken me four days to get that DD cancelled!
Every time I went into online baking and tried to delete it I got an error message of 'page not found'. I know the bank are doing major updates on their website, so that's why I've given it a few days, but I've just telephoned the bank and spoken to a real live person. Seems the problem was not the bank's website, but some sort of 'corruption' in the recipient's (Butterick's) file! The woman I spoke to couldn't delete it in the usual way but had to block it in some other way.
Anyway it's done now and I might, or might not, re-subscribe at some time in the future, but certainly not until I'm certain that they have sorted out all their problems.
-
We seem to have 2 different threads running on the same subject - this one and the one headed "Sew Direct"
-
Having cancelled my subscription several weeks ago, I have just received the latest issue of the magazine!