How a 40-Year-Old Arts & Crafts Chain Ended Up in Chapter 11 While Everyone Was Busy Making Vision Boards
There was a time when walking into an art supply store felt like entering a secular cathedral.
The smell of paper.
The faint chemical tang of acrylic paint.
The unsettling realization that charcoal pencils are both very expensive and somehow still dusty.
These places were not built for speed. They were built for wandering. For touching things you absolutely did not need. For convincing yourself that buying a $38 sketchbook would finally unlock your creative destiny—only to later use it as a coaster.
And yet here we are, watching Artist & Craftsman Supply, a 40-year-old arts and crafts chain founded in 1985, file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while the internet calmly suggests you buy 72 acrylic paint tubes for $19.99 and have them delivered before dinner.
This is not just a bankruptcy story.
This is a story about how creativity became content, how patience became friction, and how glue sticks died so quietly no one even noticed.
Born Before the Algorithm, Dying Under It
Artist & Craftsman Supply didn’t stumble into existence chasing scale or disruption. It was born in a world where:
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Independent storefronts ruled
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Catalog sales were considered aggressive innovation
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The phrase “add to cart” had not yet been invented
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And buying art supplies required leaving your house
Founded in 1985, when shoulder pads were still a thing and the internet was just an idea whispered by people who hadn’t slept, the company began as a small art supply store serving real humans who physically showed up.
Back then, arts and crafts retail was charmingly chaotic. One store might sell paints, stationery, hardware, office supplies, and maybe a random ceramic frog. It worked because the competition wasn’t a global logistics network—it was the shop down the street.
Then came the 1990s. Expansion happened. Product lines widened. Kids’ supplies, novelty items, eclectic gifts. The chain grew to 34 locations at its peak and eventually became one of the largest independent art supply retailers in the United States.
And then, like so many businesses built on time, touch, and attention, it ran face-first into a system that optimizes for none of those things.
The Pandemic Didn’t Kill It—The Recovery Did
Retail loves to blame Covid for everything, but that’s too simple and frankly lazy.
Yes, the pandemic was brutal. It accelerated trends that were already choking brick-and-mortar retail. But the real damage came after, when:
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Debt became expensive
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Inventory became unpredictable
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Lending tightened
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And consumers decided that convenience was now non-negotiable
Artist & Craftsman Supply entered Chapter 11 in December 2025 citing “economic headwinds” and “tight lending restrictions.” Translation: the financial system decided it no longer had patience for slow, tactile businesses that don’t scale cleanly.
The numbers tell the story plainly:
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Assets: $10–50 million
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Liabilities: $10–50 million
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$1.5 million owed on a revolving line of credit
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$1.9 million owed to the SBA
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A modest but telling $65,000 in credit card processing claims
This wasn’t reckless growth.
This was survival debt.
And survival debt doesn’t impress banks.
Joann Fell First—and Took Everyone With It
Artist & Craftsman Supply wasn’t operating in isolation. It was part of a supply ecosystem that collapsed like a badly assembled popsicle bridge.
Earlier in 2025, Joann, the crafts and fabric behemoth, filed for Chapter 11 for the second time and then announced the closure of all 815 stores. That decision didn’t just eliminate a retailer—it vaporized demand for suppliers overnight.
One of those suppliers, IG Design Group Americas, followed Joann into bankruptcy by July 2025, citing the sudden collapse of its customer base.
This is the under-reported truth of retail failure:
When a giant falls, it doesn’t fall alone.
Small suppliers, niche brands, regional chains—all of them are tethered to the same fragile web of purchase orders and payment terms. Once a major node disappears, the rest scramble to rebalance. Most don’t.
Employee Ownership: Idealism Meets the Balance Sheet
In 2016, Artist & Craftsman Supply became a 100% employee-owned company. On paper, this is the kind of move people love to celebrate. It’s democratic. It’s humane. It’s the opposite of private equity strip-mining.
And yet.
Employee ownership doesn’t insulate a company from:
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Rising rents
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Shrinking foot traffic
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E-commerce price wars
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Lenders who want certainty, not culture
Over nine years, the chain shrank from 34 locations to 18. Sixteen stores disappeared quietly. No viral outrage. No boycott. Just leases expiring and doors locking.
The company now employs 138 people—119 full-time, 19 part-time—and serves about 120,000 rewards members. That’s not nothing. But in modern retail math, it’s also not enough to command favorable credit terms.
The system doesn’t care how principled your ownership structure is. It cares whether your margins can survive Amazon.
A Store Built for Browsing in a World That Hates Browsing
Art supply stores are fundamentally inefficient by design.
They encourage you to:
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Touch everything
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Ask questions
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Stand there thinking
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Buy things you didn’t plan to buy
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Leave without buying anything at all
This is a nightmare scenario for modern commerce.
Online shopping doesn’t tolerate indecision. It doesn’t reward wandering. It doesn’t allow for the quiet moment when you realize you want linoleum carving tools for reasons you cannot articulate.
Artist & Craftsman Supply sells beautiful things:
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Paints
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Drawing tools
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Sculpting materials
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Printmaking supplies
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Specialty papers
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Studio gear
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Gifts that feel personal
These are not impulse buys. They are considered purchases. They require space, patience, and guidance.
Which is exactly what the modern economy refuses to fund.
“But They’re Opening a New Store!”
Yes. The company plans to open a new location in Westbrook, Maine, in January 2026.
This fact feels almost rebellious.
In an era where every bankruptcy story ends with liquidation, here is a company saying: We are reorganizing. We are still here.
Chapter 11 is not a funeral. It’s a negotiation. It’s a pause button pressed while creditors argue over spreadsheets.
But make no mistake—opening one store while filing for bankruptcy is not optimism. It’s defiance mixed with necessity. It’s the retail equivalent of repainting your kitchen while your house is on Zillow.
The Real Problem: Creativity Was Outsourced
Art didn’t disappear. Creativity didn’t die. Crafts didn’t stop mattering.
They were repackaged.
Now creativity lives inside:
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Subscription boxes
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Influencer kits
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Algorithm-approved hobbies
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Five-step reels with affiliate links
The act of learning a craft—the fumbling, the mistakes, the conversations with store staff who know things—became inconvenient.
Why struggle with linocut printmaking when you can buy a pre-designed kit and call it “DIY”?
Why learn color theory when a filter does it for you?
Art supply stores didn’t fail because people stopped creating.
They failed because creativity became content instead of practice.
The Beige Future of Retail
What replaces these stores when they go?
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Warehouses
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Distribution centers
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Fulfillment hubs
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Empty shells with “For Lease” signs
You don’t lose just products. You lose places.
You lose the weird local energy of a store that smells like paper and ambition. You lose the cashier who knows which brush you need. You lose the accidental discovery of a medium you didn’t know existed.
And you replace it with speed.
Fast. Cheap. Invisible.
This Bankruptcy Is a Warning, Not an Anomaly
Artist & Craftsman Supply is not an outlier. It is a preview.
A preview of what happens when:
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Lending becomes hostile to patience
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Retail is judged solely on efficiency
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Physical space is treated as a liability instead of a feature
The arts and crafts sector is being hollowed out not because it lacks demand, but because it refuses to flatten itself into something frictionless.
And friction, in today’s economy, is treated as failure.
The Ironic Ending
Here’s the cruel irony:
People will mourn these stores after they’re gone.
They will post nostalgic photos.
They will complain about “the loss of community.”
They will say, “They don’t make places like this anymore.”
And then they will order their next paint set online because it’s cheaper and arrives faster.
The system is very good at training us to grieve things we actively participate in eliminating.
Final Brushstroke
Artist & Craftsman Supply filing for Chapter 11 isn’t about bad management or outdated thinking. It’s about what kind of economy we decided to build.
One that rewards speed over depth.
One that values logistics more than learning.
One that can deliver a thousand options instantly but struggles to keep a single place alive.
The glue sticks didn’t fail.
The sketchbooks didn’t fail.
The people didn’t fail.
The patience did.
And patience, it turns out, doesn’t qualify for favorable lending terms.