Baby-Boomers Help Simplicity Pattern Bounce Back

Simplicity Pattern Co. was barely alive three years ago after being hit with enormous debts from a series of takeovers, but its loyal customers--baby boomers who like the do-it-yourself approach--stood by.

With its financial burdens lighter, Simplicity is now expanding to continue serving those core customers who have made home sewing into a $3-billion market.

Boomers--that 76-million-strong bunch born from 1946 through 1964--also like to make curtains, reupholster furniture, make wooden ornaments and more. So a healthier Simplicity has begun growing its business by taking the how-to method outside the pattern market.

“We’re basically an instructional company,” said Chief Executive and President Louis Morris, credited with turning Simplicity around after joining the company in 1990.

“By using the how-to concept we think we can get into other new product related areas,” he said of the company’s expansion into how-to booklets on crafts, home decorating and woodworking.

The crafts and home decorating businesses now account for about 25% of Simplicity’s sales and are becoming an important means of self-expression, according to Judy Raymond, senior vice president.

Speaking of the sewing boom of the ‘70s, attributed in part to baby-boomers, Raymond said: “While everybody wore jeans at the time, they were embroidered differently, they were studded, they were rhinestoned. We believe that today the core customer is that exact person whose sewing needs might be a little different but skill level has probably increased.”

At age 38, Toni Everett fits the profile. Her 10-room Colonial home in the New York City suburb of Mt. Vernon is embellished with many items she has made. Draperies and hand-painted wood carvings decorate the dining room, and other rooms hold displays of rugs, bird cages, decorated clocks, reupholstered chairs and jewelry boxes.

“I do it more for relaxation rather than anything else. But the dollar savings include not sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch,” she quipped.

The bulk of Simplicity’s business is its apparel segment, now logging annual sales of $100 million, compared to just $67 million when Morris took the helm of the floundering company.