AllCraft Media in Liquidation

UPDATE!! Modern Quilting, Sew Hip, Simply Beautiful, Handmade Fashion, Handmade weddings have been bought by something called Craft Magazine shop. Ominously this domain name was registered by All Craft Media (oddly enough after the date of administration). It looks like Kerrie may still be involved, although nothing has been confirmed publicly yet.

This might be a bit of a rambling post, and I'm sorry for insisting on using the exclamation mark every time I type "Sew Hip!" but it's important to me ;-)
There is a brief guide to the history of Allcraft Media and her predecessors at http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/friends-of-the-group-once-known-as/2116987/1-25#19

AllCraft Media, the publishers of Sew Hip! magazine, went into administration early in May (some time while I was in hospital full of painkillers!).They also published Knit Magazine (Formerly Yarn Forward, to be re-named Yarnwise from Issue 50) Sew Hip Handmade Living Inside Crochet Simply Beautiful Modern Quilting Handmade Fashion (to have been published from April 2012)

I've had two dresses featured in Sew Hip! magazine, the blue shift dress with yo-yos which was featured about this time last year, and more recently the colourblocked dress which featured in their design competition.

The blue shift dress was actually commissioned by KAL media, the previous publishers of Sew Hip!. Those of you who follow craft gossip (especially knitting gossip) will know that KAL Media was run by Kerrie Allman. Ms Allman already had a bit of a bad reputation by this point, previously she had run a company called Hipknits which had long running problems with yarn not being delivered and when it was it was not of the quality people expect. In fact a friend warned me off having dealings with KAL Media because Kerrie was involved. I made a decision to submit a design anyway. The amount of money they were willing to pay me was not a lot for the work involved, but it seemed like a good platform to try drafting a multisized pattern for public use (rather than the scribbled ones I make for my own use).
Anyway, I think it was my 2011 that the dress was featured. The contract stated that I would be paid the month after publication. This month came and went and I hadn't been paid. Eventually I sent a reminder e-mail, and when I had no response I sent an e-mail telling them to pay me or I would sue them. That might seem a bit extreme, but that is what you have to do if someone won't pay up. If you are in business for yourself you need to know what to do to enforce a contract and be willing to do it. After the second e-mail someone called me to tell me that KAL had gone into liquidation and Sew Hip! was being run by "an entirely different company". In fairness, this entirely different company, AllCraft Media, did pay me what KAL owed me. They didn't have to. When a limited company dies, anyone owed money has to contact the administrator and join a list of creditors who will be paid from whatever is leftover once the taxman and the employees have been paid. What the person didn't tell me is that AllCraft Media were owned by Kerrie's husband. KAL were in more debt than they could pay (about £200,000), so they voluntarily wound up. Allcraft Media bought the goodwill of the titles for about £3,000. How is this legal, I hear you cry? Well it is. It's fairly common and it's known as a phoenix company.
I didn't lose any money from the end of KAL, although the sample shift dress I made was never returned to me. Lots of people did. If you are owed money by KAL then contact the liquidators at Harrison.Smith@carterclark.co.uk (Tel: 0208 524 1447).

Allcraft Media were formed before KAL liquidated. As mentioned above, they bought up the goodwill and the titles of the magazines and carried on as normal. I entered the design competition on a bit of a whim in November 2012. I can be honest now, I spent a few hours on the initial design, tops. The top prizes were rather nice sewing machines so I took another calculated risk. Getting through to the finals meant I had to actually make the dress, which was a fair amount of work. In the end I was a runner up. I got to see my dress on the catwalk (which was ace) and got free tickets to the Sewing for Pleasure Show for me and my mum. My prize was a box of thread and the intention was for the finalists of the design competition to draft their designs into multisized patterns for a special supplement further down the line. I made sure I got my dress back as soon as the model disrobed!
I was told that my prize - the box of thread - would be sent direct to me. It wasn't. I have started work on the multisized pattern but breaking my ankle interrupted that anyway. If the magazine does find a buyer (it hasn't yet although some of Inside Crochet, Yarnwise and Handmade Living will be published by Tailor Made Publishing - a previously uninvolved company who have said they will renegotiate with designers who had submitted previously unpublished designs) then maybe the supplement will still happen. If not then I might offer the pattern (and the blue shift dress) for sale, so I haven't lost out there.

So from the sorry episode, I have lost a dress and some thread. Others have lost a lot more. The employees have lost there jobs. And there are designers who had several submissions who were not paid at all. Worse still, it seems that some designers were sold by AllCraft Media to an American publication, Love of Crochet, without the permission of the designers, and without paying them. There are many samples lost. My dress was fairly cheap in materials and fairly quick to make. Not so some of the beautiful knitted and crocheted garments. As well as employees and designers, subscribers to the magazine, the sock club and the lace club have lost out.

Anybody who is owed money or goods, including advanced subscriptions for Magazines, sock, lace or crochet clubs should contact the administrator at
FRP Advisory
10 Furnival Street
London
EC4A 1YH

Tel: +44 (0)20 3005 4000
Fax: +44 (0)20 3005 4400
If you submitted designs to Inside Crochet it might be a good idea to have a look at http://www.loveofknitting.com/issues/Love_of_Crochet_Summer_2012 to see if anything has been republished without your knowledge.
If you sent a sample to any of the KAL/AllCraft Media titles and haven't had it returned, you should contact lesleyanneparkin@gmail.com - Lesley is a Ravelry member who has very kindly offered to reunite samples to makers as long as makers provide P+P.

Sorry for the infodump. I hope someone finds all this helpful!