CK Media Sold, Mass Layoff Ordered
Sources are telling Scrapbook Update that CK Media has found a buyer for the floundering company - and that one of their first actions at the company was to order a mass layoff.
CK Media, the parent company of Creating Keepsakes and PaperCrafts magazines, was formed in June 2006 when Sandler Capital Management purchased the crafts group of publications from Primedia.
CK Media has now been purchased from Sandler Capital by a company called New Track Media LLC, which is a Cambridge, MA-based publishing company that is part of the portfolio of private equity company Boston Ventures. New Track Media's other publications include American Woodworker, Woodwork Magazine, Love of Quilting, and Sky & Telescope. In addition, the company owns the quilting properties Keepsake Quilting, QNNtv, and Quilter's Club of America. (Besides its scrapbooking magazines, CK Media has an extensive portfolio of sewing and quilting magazines.)
New Track Media has previous connections to the scrapbook publishing industry. It was founded in 2006 by Stephen J. Kent, the former president and CEO of F+W Publishing, the parent company of Memory Makers Magazine. Kent is now the CEO of New Track Media, and has brought many former F+W executives into New Track's upper management.
As part of the transition to New Track Media control over CK Media, layoffs were handed out today to a large number of CK Media employees. Included in the cuts were Will Marks (CEO), Rich Hybner (CFO), Dave ONeill (VP/Group Publisher), Lin Sorenson (VP/Editorial Director), Brian Tippetts (Creating Keepsakes Editor-In-Chief), Stace Hasigawa (PaperCrafts Art Director), and Ana Cabrera (CK Social Media Manager), plus a large portion of the finance department, and the entire production teams in the company's Golden & Bluffdale, Utah offices.
