Tailor Made decided they wanted to keep Knit, Inside Crochet and Handmade Living magazines and sell the other magazines. Last week it was announced that the other magazines (which include the sewing and quilting titles - Sew Hip, Modern Quilting & Handmade Fashion) had been purchased by a company called Craft Magazine Shop.
So who are Craft Magazine Shop, and most importantly do they have anything to do with ACM owner Kerrie Allman and her family? I hear you ask. Well judging by the e-mails they have been sending and the blog post announcing the purchase they would like you to think they don't.
However, that blog post is not the original, the original (below) had a familiar name at the top....
The company are not registered with Companies House so we cannot check who is the owner, they have said it is someone called Derek Barnes but have given no information as to who he is. The domain name for their new website has however been registered, by All Craft Media at one of their previous addresses - a week after they went into administration! Funny that, given the business was in the hands of the administrators by then I wouldn't have imagined they would be buying domain names for the next pheonix company...
So it's not looking like indepedent owners (unrelated to orginal owner Kerrie Allman) to me. But I leave you to draw your own conclusions when you decide whether to work with them, or purchase their magazines in the future.
Edited to add - Kerrie has just blogged about this on her personal blog here.
8 comments:
Thanks for digging into this for us, Fiona. I advertised with Sew Hip once but the advertising department was so uninterested and unfriendly that I didn't place another ad with them. Looks like I was lucky to get out early.
Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the sewing community. As someone who got burnt several years ago, I think its important that the prospective submitters and readers are fully informed!
This company stills owes me £150 and I shall not be buying their magazine ever again. Nor will I be submitting anything. I shall also warn the readers of my blog too. I have kept quiet about this hoping that the administrators would answer my email. They had not and I intend on making sure that my designs are splashed across my blog so if they appear in other publications I may just go after them for it! Loathsome group of people and I bet watchdog would have a field day with this bunch!
Many thanks for keeping us up to date on all this.
xx
Hi Fiona, Thanks for posting this. I had an email from them saying they were going to put one of my ads in the MQ mag at the end of June so I called them straight away to ask them not to. I also spoke to Shirley Rycroft, I had no idea she was Kerrie's mother! She was cagey about the new owners and wasn't even sure of the new company name. The website link they sent me is a Wordpress blog with some pages still saying Sew Hip etc are owned by ACM and with posts by Kerrie so I had a feeling it was the same people and it all seemed quite rushed and unprofessional. I'll be steering clear. x
Thanks Fi, it's great you are keeping on top of this for us. I had been chatting with the new editor but wont be following that up!
Quite apart from the fact that the blog post suggests that the KAL/ACM saga rumbles on, it's a grammatical nightmare – poor show from 'publishing professionals'.
I have just had a conversation with Shirley Rycroft who was very evasive with regards to the owner Derek Barnes.
They said the Modern Quilting Magazine is out in the stores and keep sending me invoices for advertising even after I said I wanted nothing to do with them.
They are still advertising annual subscriptions BE WARNED don't take one out and spread the word.
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