Sundance catalog: As customers complain, jewelry designers say they are owed millions

Emily Amey remembers getting the Sundance catalog when she was a girl in the Appalachian foothills. Within the magazine’s bright pages, she saw a future career path, one that would allow her to create — and make a living — selling her “hippie-roots, art school kid” jewelry.

A spinoff of Robert Redford’s Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah, the catalog developed a loyal following by curating products that emanated rugged Americana, showcasing artisans who crafted small-batch, high-quality jewelry, clothes, furniture and other goods.

When a representative for the brand found Amey at an art show in New York about 15 years ago, she said, it was a “big deal.” Having your work in the catalog “legitimizes you as a business person, as an artist.”

“They were always the gold standard of who every small artist wanted to work with,” Amey said, “like super communicative, super loyal, paid on time.”

Amey and other artists now say their experiences — and the catalog — have changed. Elizabeth Kellin, who created a Los Angeles-based jewelry design studio with her sister, Dana, said she is the appointed spokesperson for about 50 other designers who say they are collectively owed millions of dollars in unpaid invoices.

Amey and Kellin, whose work has been featured in the catalog for more than 25 years, said they alone are owed tens of thousands of dollars for products the company ordered to offer through the catalog and online.

In an earlier step, they explained, Sundance buyers typically ask artisans for samples and then hold on to them, sometimes for years, waiting for the right time to order pieces and slot them into an upcoming catalog edition.

With Sundance Catalog’s recent rebrand to Sundance Living, the loss of certain longtime staff, a lighter emphasis on jewelry and the unpaid invoices, Kellin said, designers worried about the company’s financial health asked it to return their samples in April. The company initially refused, she said.

But on May 1, Kellin said, she received written confirmation from CEO Laura Barrett that the company will return samples. In the confirmation, shared with The Salt Lake Tribune, Barrett wrote: “I am hopeful we can move forward with the holiday season at some point in the very near future, then I may ask to ‘borrow’ them back.”

Barrett also shared her outlook for the catalog, which was first mailed in 1989: “I am very hopeful we will find an investor or a buyer to take on this amazing brand.”

Barrett and the company did not respond to repeated voicemail messages and emails sent by The Tribune over multiple days since May 1, requesting comment on the designers’ concerns and other issues. An attorney who represented the company in a recently dismissed lawsuit also did not respond to The Tribune’s repeated emailed requests for comment.

Kellin said she hopes the promised return of the samples will be the first step in righting relationships with the catalog — which have been so important for the small artisans whose work fills its pages.

The latest iteration of the catalog landed on porches and in mailboxes days ago, chiefly showcasing clothing.

‘Not what it used to be’

Redford’s Sundance empire began with 1969 resort, which later opened a general store. Guests would write back to the small shop from home, asking if they could buy handcrafted goods they had seen there. That interest led to the first catalog, mailed in the fall of 1989, according to a history on its website.

By 2004, when Redford sold the Salt Lake City-based catalog business to private equity firms ACI Capital and Webster Capital, the deal was valued between $20 million and $40 million, according to Dow Jones newswire. Brentwood Associates acquired a majority stake in 2012, and then sold it back to Webster Capital, based in Massachusetts, in 2018.

When the catalog celebrated its 30-year anniversary in 2019, it said it had 500 employees and 15 retail stores across the country selling works by “its dedicated artisan community” and brands like Frye, Old Gringo and Pendleton Woolen Mills.

But in February 2024, Amey said, she learned a longtime buyer — someone who went to crafts shows, scouting artists like Amey, to feature — was no longer working for the company. “And then it’s just been turnover city since then,” she said.

Sundance hasn’t just lost staff; it has lost itself, said Kellin. “You just started seeing less integrity towards what they offered their customers,” she said. “The selections became kind of cheap and cheery, and they became less loyal to their original core designers.”

Even the paper the catalog was printed on felt cheaper, Kellin said. Online, customers have shared similar criticism. “In the last few months, the website has changed, the clothes are nothing special, and the quality is not what it used to be,” one commenter wrote on the company’s Facebook page in October.

“What happened to the Sundance Catalog? Ever since they changed their website (a month or so ago) AND changed their magazine — the quality of everything has gone down!” another said on that same post.

Customers increasingly aired grievances on social media about delayed orders and reimbursements for returns, gift cards that didn’t work, merchandise listed as available that actually wasn’t and other complaints.

In recent months, the company has replied to complaints to the Better Business Bureau with apologies and explanations: It has had “a higher email and call volume than expected”; updated its billing system; had “internal issues” with gift cards; and had “a system issue that allowed sold out items to be purchased.”

A group of customers sued Sundance Holdings LLC, the catalog’s parent company, last year, alleging it has “profit[ed] handsomely” from selling or otherwise disclosing their personal information — including their names, addresses, the products they purchased and their cost — without permission.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit on technical grounds earlier this week, but the plaintiffs have filed a notice to appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Support artisanal work

Before Barrett took over as CEO at the Sundance catalog in March 2024, according to her LinkedIn page, she spent three decades at Soft Surroundings, a catalog-based clothing and accessory company. She rose to CEO and president there before leaving in March 2023.

A month later, she opined in TotalRetail about what she saw as a chance for a catalog renaissance. “People still want to connect with others,” she wrote. “They need to engage, have experiences, explore, learn, be entertained and establish their position/identity within society.”

“What we’re seeing is that post-pandemic/quarantine psychology has elevated a renewed interest in physical engagements over digital. Thus,” she continued, “opening the once locked door to print marketing, direct mail and catalogs.”

In September, five months after that article was published, Soft Surroundings filed for bankruptcy and was acquired by Coldwater Creek, a competitor.

The designers’ concern that Sundance could face a similar path spurred their request for their samples, Kellin said. “When you have this kind of money owed to so many people in this country and, quite frankly, around the world,” she said, “you have to think about, well, at what point do I cut my losses?”

Kellin said jewelry designers understand the tough economic climate, and the developing impact of tariffs, but they also know the Sundance catalog thrived amid recent economic uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They believe the catalog can bounce back, she said. They want its focus to return to designers and quality products. No more “base metals” in jewelry. No more “derivative brands” from overseas, Kellin said. She would love to see them rehire the buyers whose tastes curated the brand for years and cultivated loyal customers.

She wants Sundance catalog to put together an advisory board of longtime designers to help guide the company’s decisions and return to its core values.

“It still sort of is the premier artisanal outlet,” Amey said. “I can’t think of anybody else on this level that supports artisanal work the way that they do.”

If it falters, Amey said, she worries how other artists will rebound, or how younger artists like her will get a foothold in a tough market — one made tougher by financial insecurities in a dwindling economy.

Kellin said that from her conversations with Barrett, she believes the executive understands and is on their side.

“I feel in my gut that she understands that if they have a product they want to sell — meaning the Sundance catalog,” Kellin said, “it’s much less valuable without this group of really talented designer, American-made products.”

For now, Kellin said the designers must wait to see how — and if — the company bounces back. Most of all, she wants the company, and the artisans whose career it bolstered, to succeed.