Knitting Conventions Vanish, Leaving Behind Thousands in Unpaid Bills

June 2, 2023 8:53 AM

Most knitters saw no hint the relationship was in serious trouble. A few of them, now that they think about it, say there were recent warning signs they missed. But in the end, all of them suffered the ultimate betrayal — they got ghosted. The source of their ire? XRX Inc., which — after running one of the biggest American knitting events, Stitches, for more than 30 years — has vanished with minimal explanation. (archive.today link)
posted by Etrigan (14 comments total)

Holy shit. If you're outside the knitting community, this really is like Comic-con packing it in.

The people running the show have always had a reputation for being quite disagreeable. But for people tempted to make "popcorn"-style comments, please keep in mind that this will screw over many many small businesses--independent knitting stores and fiber artists and freelance knitting instructors--whose money XRX has (apparently) vanished.
posted by praemunire at 9:38 AM on June 2, 2023 [23 favorites]

I hope people get their funds back.

Hobby conferences are a strange creature and are really, really expensive to put on. (The one I'm closely tied to used to cost over $1M to put on yearly, but that was a few years ago and I'm sure it's more now)

There's also the question of who the market is for in these days of online classes, youtube tutorials, etc. They used to serve as meetups and explorations for lots of folks, but my sneaking suspicion from what I've seen is that's a smaller piece of the hobby market these days with the cost of travel, registration, etc.

(None of that eliminates the fact that this is crap behavior on the part of the organizers though)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:55 AM on June 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

I vended at the last pre-pandemic Stitches West (which somehow miraculously did not become a super spreader event considering it was held in Feb 2020) and there were already some grumblings over slightly lower attendance, and they had already announced that they were moving the event away from Santa Clara to Sacramento.

Ostensibly it was for more space in the future, but there was a lot of consternation since Sacramento is a lot more difficult for people to get to in general, has fewer knitters overall, there's less wealth concentrated in the area, etc. Plus there's already Lambtown 30 minutes away in Dixon every year. The article mentions lower attendance at Stitches West last year, but doesn't mention the venue shift. I think they also did this with a couple of the east coast conventions.

Anyway, the event did always seem a little ramshackle and the pandemic was probably the last nail in the coffin. The venue shift certainly didn't help though.
posted by mikesch at 9:57 AM on June 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

The pandemic's hotel-contract effects are still shaking out for a lot of events - the one I help run got lucky, our hotel was happy to roll 2020 over to 2021 and then give us a bit of a break when we didn't put on a 2021 in-person convention, but if we'd been bigger, hadn't pivoted to virtual as successfully, and hadn't had the substantial amount of community goodwill that we did, the bill in 2021 would have broken the org. We went back to in-person last year and came out almost dead even - literally a total profit of a couple bucks. Some clever fundraising has put us back in a reasonable position for this year and we think we might just be back in it, but it was a *near fucking thing* - and this is a convention that has no vendors, minimal expenses other than the base hotel contract, and a total attendence cap of 200.

None of which is to say that these people aren't shits who fucked over a lot of people - they are, and they almost certainly knew this was a possibility a year ago and kept extracting money and labor until the last possible minute. I'm just saying that we probably haven't seen the end of event collapses like this.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:04 AM on June 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ah, yes, this is the business I've been making cagey comments about occasionally. I never had any issues dealing with the management in patronizing the online classes and going to Stitches and doing online Zoom chats, but also I didn't piss that guy off, either. I started seeing rumor mill commentary right around the end of Stitches West 2023 and was pretty horrified to find out that the owner(?) likes to threaten to dox people, hence my being cagey about comments. I'm not sure if that's an issue anyone needs to worry about any more, given what happened. I can also say that last year was around 300 vendors (I think they had around 1000 in Santa Clara) and this year was about 100, plus people having weather issues just trying to get there. And after reading people saying they weren't going to come back after 2023, I started thinking that was the last Stitches. I was right, darn it.

I have been following all of this and there is NO news since the supposedly bankruptcy hinting happened. Hoo boy. I feel bad for the teachers and vendors, and also I'll just plain miss going. I go to Lambtown, but it's a way smaller version of Stitches and I was much more into the Stitches options for classes, both online and IRL. It sounds like Vogue Knitting may be it for major online class offerings. I actually got a lot out of the Stitches experience and I'm sad to hear how bad things were under the surface.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:50 AM on June 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

i never attended a stitches event because they were too far away. this shitty news makes me thankful for some of the smaller local fiber festivals in or near SW michigan.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:49 PM on June 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was right, darn it

It’s never a bad time for an even worse pun.
posted by apathy at 5:36 PM on June 2, 2023 [12 favorites]

I have been to one textile convention in my life and still treasure that experience. I always dreamed of going to a Stitches. Now I’m looking at interweave and vogue with grave concern.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:22 PM on June 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

How could it all have come unraveled?
posted by nickggully at 8:43 PM on June 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

This is awful and i really do hope that all those people owed money get some if not all of it back.

Running conventions is a hard business but that is no excuse for stealing peoples time and skills to prop up your failing business.

Female coded crafts are already largely derided as 'hobbies' even when being run as viable business, sounds like a lot of the people involved could lose their livelihood over this or at least be in severe financial straights.

This is awful.
posted by Faintdreams at 8:16 AM on June 4, 2023

As a bonus, the fabric-arts singles resort opening in New Hampshire can claim their rightful name.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 2:26 PM on June 4, 2023

I don't have a non-firewalled link to share, but people are now receiving letters from XRX's lawyer about how long they have to ask for an (unlikely) refund. Sounds like the company is dissolving rather than bankruptcy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:05 PM on June 12, 2023

I unfortunately can't provide non-firewalled links again, but people who taught at Stitches West are now being told that XRX didn't pay for their classrooms and they are now going to be charged for this on their credit cards. GEEEEEEEZ.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:19 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's a PDF article on the topic, with a quote from one of the founders saying "We're closed" and shutting the door.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:55 PM on June 21, 2023