In Memoriam Craftsy

RIP Craftsy: 2011 - 2019

Where are you getting your sewing inspiration from these days?

If one of your responses is "from blogs like yours", let me thank you on behalf of me and my fellow sewing bloggers for the support.

In my case, the majority of my current sewing inspiration seems to come from YouTube. It's a reality I would never have seen coming a few years ago.

Shortly after I got back into sewing in 2012, I discovered Craftsy. Over time, I would visit on a daily basis, read their blog posts, scan their indie patterns and generally soak up the community spirit. Eventually, I set up shop to sell my patterns there. For someone with only a small presence, I was fortunate enough to amass ninety-three followers in the two years before "the change" happened.

In 2016, the community aspect largely went bye-bye when the website was revamped. Crafters lost the connections that they had made with designers and Craftsy itself began to morph into something else entirely... which, of course — as we all know now — was the beginning of the transformation into Bluprint.

---

Check out crafty classes at Creativebug! [affiliate link]

---

When I wrote that blogs seemed to be disappearing a few months ago, I went to Bluprint to check if they had reinstated their former blog. Not only is the answer a disappointing "no", I subsequently found out that their main blogger had been let go during the transition from Craftsy.

Blogs are community oriented. They exist to share information among those of similar interests. Through the process of commenting, the helpfulness of a blog post can be multiplied many times over. Upon further digging, I discovered that Bluprint's new way of sharing the old Craftsy blog posts was to strip them down to bare essentials and call them articles.

Take this one for example. It originally appeared on Craftsy's blog in May of 2015.

A sample Craftsy blog post turned "article" in Bluprint...

I remember seeing it, and bookmarked it for all of the helpful comments that accompanied the post. Those comments are no more... or at least I can't see them. This is what appears at the bottom of the "article".

You need to be a subscriber in order to leave a comment?

Even though I have a Bluprint account, it looks like I need to subscribe to their streaming service in order to "join [in] on the conversation". Now, I am not entirely convinced that if I were a subscriber that those old comments will suddenly be visible, but that might be the case.

Sadly, no.

Here is an example from an article about how to adjust the tension on your sewing machine. The link now goes to an article dated November 4, 2019, but I'm positive that I bookmarked it way before then. I can't say with any confidence how many comments were under it when it first appeared many years ago, but this is what you get now.

Any comments that you see will be more recent one from Bluprint's time...

We can safely assume that only new comments from the time of Bluprint's takeover are attached to these articles, and that comments from their time as Craftsy's blog posts are simply gone.

On the other hand, don't let the loss of the community input put you off from appreciating these articles. Here are just some of the topics that you can read up on (and maybe save).

Just a few of the old Craftsy blog posts that can be found on Bluprint...

The last two are special to me. The one featuring 7 fast and free patterns includes my shopping list and coupon holder. The last one is just more love for my own vintage machine.

Anyway, this has been a long way around to saying that I miss Craftsy's blog. Along with the interaction that crafters had with designers and vice versa, it was the foundation of a very welcoming and friendly community.

I haven't been able to find anything similar under the new Bluprint banner.

---

Watch live classes for FREE at CreativeLive! [affiliate link]

---

If you're the sort of person who likes the "behind the scenes story", look up Craftsy Bluprint on craftindustryalliance.org. The origin of Craftsy, what it was meant to be and what Bluprint is now doing can be found in the relevant posts and in the comments from various users.

You won't have to dig too deep to comprehend what Bluprint's priorities are when responses to customer concerns consist of fluff and self congratulations such as what you see in the following example. This review (from a person named Helen) and subsequent response was posted on Trustpilot.com last summer.

The takeover of Craftsy by NBCUniversal has been an object lesson in how not to take ownership of an existing successful business. They have alienated designers by unilaterally deciding to close down their pattern design store to new entries and drastically reducing the number of patterns in the store. I can understand that they wanted to get control of something that was getting out of hand, with possible copyright violations; however the store had been in existence for many years, could they not have maintained it until they had a replacement store ready and fully tested, with appropriate safeguards built in? It could have been a selling point to both designers and purchasers if they had put in place more robust checks around copyright and quality, we may have been prepared to pay more for such designs.

They have alienated their paying customers with unhelpful, unstable apps. The new Bluprint apps on both Android and IOS platforms have been flaky over the last few months. I have the latest operating systems and a very fast internet link, but these apps have frozen or acted up in many mysterious ways.

As a major purchaser of Craftsy classes (nearly 300) I also find it unnecessarily difficult to find my own forever classes. As far as I can tell I cannot search for a particular class or tutor as I can in the Craftsy app, I have to manually scroll through all my classes to find the one I want. If I forget to go to the own forever library option and just click on the continue to watch option I am asked to take out a subscription for a class I already own. I work in IT and see this as a fundamental flaw in the software coding. I am already logged in, it knows which classes I have purchased, it should be relatively simple to combine these two factors to allow me to watch my classes no matter where I find them on the site. Where was the user testing before going live? I project manage software rollouts as a living, if this had been my responsibility I would have expected to be sacked months ago.

NBCUniversal seem to have changed the editorial policy, concentrating on ‘celebrity’ content and reruns of tv shows, rather than employing recognised craft professionals. This content is not the solid ‘how to’ information that we were used to, treating Bluprint as just another TV channel rather than an online community. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like a way to differentiate between these types of material. It must be particularly hard for new users of the platform to find the really good classes. I would still recommend a Bluprint subscription to people who have never used the platform, but probably only for the year it may take to watch the older classes, not as an on going subscription service.

Even before it became Bluprint the length of time in each series of classes had greatly reduced. I didn’t mind that they cut out the often long winded introductions by each instructor. I do not need to see people stitch every single seam of a garment in real time, or stand around watching something boil on the hob, however the recent classes were very short, from half an hour down to 15 minutes. I understand attention spans have shortened, but that would argue for 20 short lessons to get the same information that were in 6 longer lessons, not reducing a whole course down to an hour and a half. These classes are certainly not worth the same amount of money as one off purchases. Initially I took out a subscription to Bluprint, but after 6 months of no new interesting classes I cancelled my subscription. Every six months or so I check back to see if any of the new content excites me enough to re subscribe, however nothing has caught my imagination yet. For the small amount of new content I want to watch, I have temporarily subscribed during ‘free’ offer periods, binge watched the relevant content and then unsubscribed as soon as the charges kicked in.

Bluprint could be good, however they have alienated so many people that it will take a lot of positive marketing and most importantly good new content, to recreate the positive comments and loyalty that Craftsy once enjoyed.

The official response from Bluprint was the following:

Hi Helen! Thank you for taking the time to write a review on Bluprint. As of January 2019, Craftsy became Bluprint! When you log into your account or go to the site, you will see that we have the same content. We have just given things a fresh coat of paint. Back in December, we made significant changes to the Pattern Marketplace. This included removing many patterns, including patterns from our top designers. We notified the designers of this change and kept a few of these patterns available on the site. We do understand that this was a favorite place for everyone, but we had to temporarily remove access to the marketplace to make changes. We look forward to inviting more designers and having more patterns available in the near future! To address your concerns with finding your own forever classes, it sounds like you may have a duplicate account with us. Please reach out to us through the link below and we'd be happy to get everything cleared up for you: http://bit.ly/2RrEHrw

I don't need to tell you that the response was woefully inadequate. But do you know what also irritated me about it? The crazy use of exclamation marks. To me it felt like I was in mourning over the "friend" that we'd all lost in Craftsy while the new upstart was excited about taking its place.

Also of note was how the response highlighted the annihilation of the pattern marketplace. Most of the independent designers' pattern shops were shuttered in December 2018, with very little notice. (I posted about it briefly here.)

In a response to another person's review about how the loss of that marketplace has affected her, Bluprint writes (in June of 2019):

First, we regret that we made you feel this way. It's never our intention to make our community members not feel valued. To provide more insight, the Pattern Marketplace was a platform that people could access and share their patterns. We felt that this was a great way to create a community with other crafters, but we did not foresee people taking advantage of the platform. We have had issues with people taking credit for designs that they did not make, and much more. To help combat this, we closed the market place and kept a few patterns from our top designers. We are currently working on improving the marketplace so that people can continue to share their awesome work! We are fans of Ravelry and do suggest their patterns as well. We do look forward to opening up the pattern marketplace for all designers in the near future.

At this point (a year and a quarter later), I don't believe that Bluprint has the need or the want for an improved pattern marketplace. I spent most of last year thinking that it would come back, but the more I saw of how Bluprint was carving out a different niche for itself, the more I began to realize that there was no sympatico going forward.

My having access to a new and improved way of selling PDFs doesn't seem to align with Bluprint's desire to deliver TV-style edu-tainment with a celebrity focus and easily consumable sound (video) bites. It's further evidence of the world being a topsy-turvy place these days, where people appear to value fame and self-promotion over actual experience and expertise. Where Craftsy's original classes were led by instructors who had in-depth knowledge of crafting, the current trend with Bluprint is to find famous people who like to do lifestyle "things".

Apparently, it's what Bluprint's market research has told them to aim for, rightly or wrongly. My guess is that they still haven't achieved the subscriber base than they originally hoped for, which is unfortunate for everyone concerned. All that said, if Bluprint's subscription model appeals to you, my recommendation is to go for it, given the greatly reduced rates they are offering.

The unfortunate reality is, if this company decides to close up shop, they'll be leaving a lot of customers from the early years of Craftsy in the lurch, without access to the content that they purchased on the assumption that it would be there forever.

Sometimes, "forever" isn't really forever.

'Til next...