Enter the Private Investor

The couple worked with Libey-Concordia to zero in on Riverside Co. as being a private equity firm that fit its interests in a financial, rather than a strategic, investor. During the past four years, Riverside has further built the Keepsake business by using it as a platform for acquisitions in the quilting and knitting direct marketing industry. Keepsake already had 18 million domestic and international customers of its quilting business. In May 2002, Riverside expanded its holdings in the craft market by buying Patternworks, a New Hampshire-based supplier of knitting and crocheting products. Then in September of that year it purchased www.eknitting.com, a Berkeley, Calif.-based retail and online store.