There’s been a change of leadership at Simplicity Creative Group, the umbrella company of the Big 4 sewing pattern brands: Simplicity, McCall’s, Vogue, and Butterick. Abbie Small, who, since October, had served as head of Simplicity Creative Group, has left the company as of March 31, six months after helping to rescue it from bankruptcy.

The company is owned by Peter Rappaport along with three of his close circle and Small. Rappaport is the founder of Rubelmann Capital, a New York City-based private equity firm. In an interview on May 13, he clarified that Simplicity is not, in fact, owned by Rubelmann Capital, as we previously reported, but by this small group of investors. Simplicity Creative Group does not currently have a CEO and, according to Rappaport, is not looking to hire one.

Small first began working at Simplicity in 1983, starting as a pattern writer. She worked in the fabric library and the sales department and helped to launch New Look. She then headed up the crafts patterns department. She stayed on at the company while Simplicity was bought and sold multiple times. Simplicity Creative Group bought McCall’s in 2016, bringing all of the Big 4 pattern brands under a single ownership. In 2017, when Wilton sold Simplicity Creative Group to CSS Industries, Small retired as Executive Vice President and General Manager in order to focus on her growing children. In 2020, Design Group Americas bought CSS Industries, and Small came out of retirement to run the pattern business.

When Design Group Americas filed for bankruptcy in October 2025, Small played an instrumental role in saving the company from being liquidated. She realized that there was a good chance that the company could disappear entirely, and successfully sought out investors who could buy it and save it.

Through her husband, Small connected with Rappaport, who, together with a few other funders and Small herself, bought Simplicity for $2.25 million. Rappaport said the group has no time horizon for selling Simplicity, estimating they could own it for two decades or more.

Coming out of bankruptcy has been challenging. The sale included the assets of the company without any of its infrastructure. The staff were locked out of their offices and lost access to their email, their servers, and payroll systems. “The day of the sale, they wiped every one of our computers clean,” Small said. They had to start over with inventory, shipping, and fulfillment systems. “Everything was shut off,” she said. According to Rappaport, rebuilding has gone more slowly than initially anticipated.

Small says she didn’t fully anticipate how much saving the business from bankruptcy would take out of her. “I saved the business, and that’s who I am,” she said. “I was never the face of the business. I was always behind-the-scenes.” Rappaport concurred. “Without Abbie there wouldn’t have been anything to save,” he said.

Small underestimated the toll it would take “to have everyone looking to her for a job and a future.” “I felt like a duck being pecked at from all sides,” she said, describing the pressure of managing different stakeholder expectations while trying to maintain harmony between long-term employees and new ownership. She and Rappaport agreed it was the right time for her to move on. Small’s daughter is getting married this summer, and she is devoting herself to enjoying being the mother of the bride.

Rappaport explained that nearly all the people who were running their departments in September are still running their departments now. According to Small, the majority of them have been with the company as long as she has, if not longer. Without a CEO, Rappaport says the teams meet each morning to fill each other in on what they’re working on.

Plans are on hold to make product improvements, including offering layered PDFs and projector files, until the fundamental infrastructure of the company has been rebuilt. This includes being able to ship to Wal-Mart, for example, and to sell patterns in the UK. Rappaport emphasized the investor group’s commitment to the heritage and quality of the Simplicity brand, and to building new retail partners since the bankruptcy and closure of Joann, the company’s largest retail outlet. He said that he and his partners aim to preserve the brands’ legacy while growing online sales by leveraging their experience in e-commerce and that he remains confident about the business’ future.

Abby Glassenberg

Co-founder