Margie Romney-Aslett Departs Advantus, The Girls Paperie; Announces New Venture
Barely 15 months after the brand was unveiled, Advantus announced early today that, at her request, it has released Margie Romney-Aslett from her contract to design The Girls Paperie product line for them.
The Girls Paperie debuted for Advantus at CHA Winter 2010. Romney-Aslett's vintage chic designs made the brand's seven lines a breakout success with strong showings at each CHA show.
The company says it has plenty of inventory of the brand's existing lines, and is working with Romney-Aslett and its customers to ensure what it calls "an orderly wind down of the line." The company will continue to take and ship orders for The Girls Paperie until it sells out its existing inventory.
"Advantus is sad to lose this product line; we felt it had great potential and the sales continued to grow. However, Margie requested to end her arrangement with Advantus due to matters unrelated to the arrangement, and we agreed to do this for her. We are working with Margie to ensure an orderly wind down of the line and apologize for the inconvenience to our customers," said Kevin Carpenter, President of Advantus, in explaining the reason behind the ending of the relationship.
Romney-Aslett also had positive things to say about the relationship: "I loved my time at Advantus. The people that I worked with there were amazing. This was a very hard decision for me but one I felt like for me and my family is the right thing to do."
Items from The Girls Paperie are currently in stock at Scrapbook.com, Two Peas In A Bucket, and Simon Says Stamp (among other stores) for consumers who'd like to stock up before the lines disappear.
Later in the day today, Romney-Aslett announced on her blog that she will be at CHA Summer 2011 with an as-yet-unnamed brand new company that she is involved in the founding of. Scrapbook Update has been told that Romney-Aslett will be debuting 8 new paper lines at the show.
In addition to her paper lines, Romney-Aslett also co-owns The Girls Loft kit club with her daughters, Megan and Brooke.
