Hoffmaster dates its move into retail to one acquisition.

Creative Converting is best understood through the company that owns it. Hoffmaster, the Wisconsin tableware maker, publishes a timeline of its own history, and one entry is given over to this brand: in 2007, Hoffmaster says, the Creative Converting acquisition allowed it to enter retail channels.

Hoffmaster’s story starts in 1947. The company says it was founded that year by B.T. Hoffmaster with a single napkin machine, and the trade site PE Professional, reporting in November 2016, likewise said the company was founded in February 1947 by B.T. Hoffmaster as a maker of paper napkin products. A July 2026 release from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation describes Hoffmaster as founded in 1947 and headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Hoffmaster’s timeline says that in 1968 it extended its range to placemats, table covers and coloured tissue napkins, and that in 2007, the same year as the Creative Converting deal, it launched CaterWrap, a rolled cutlery and napkin product for foodservice operators.

The same 2016 report described the deals that shaped the modern group. PE Professional said that in October 2007 the New York investment firm Kohlberg & Company acquired two companies, the Hoffmaster Company from Solo Cup and Converting, Inc. from the investor Mason Wells, and merged them under the new name Hoffmaster Group. That is the year Hoffmaster’s own timeline gives for bringing Creative Converting into the business.

Hoffmaster has owned Creative Converting since 2007. Today the creativeconverting.com address leads to Hoffmaster’s own website, where the party range sits within the company’s consumer division.

Solids, occasions and seasons.

Hoffmaster’s consumer division describes its job as partnering with retailers on tabletop and party products for everyday meals and celebrations. Its website groups the range into plates, napkins, table covers, cutlery and cups, and accessories and decor, and sorts designs into three families: solid colours meant to be mixed and matched, occasions and events such as birthdays, graduations and gatherings, and seasonal designs for summer, autumn, the holidays and beyond.

The division sells through catalogues timed to the retail calendar. In October 2026 Hoffmaster’s consumer page listed an everyday catalogue, a fall and holiday catalogue, a spring and summer catalogue, and a catalogue of NFL designs for the 2026–2027 season. The company says a dedicated design team studies trends and consumer styles and builds each collection through colour, pattern and storytelling, with designs intended to work together so that shoppers can combine plates, napkins and covers into their own table settings. It names the specialists on that team as trend and consumer insight experts, colour, pattern and collection designers, and retail merchandising and packaging specialists.

The WEDC release of July 2026 describes Hoffmaster’s plate lines in similar terms, spanning seasonal, special-occasion, solid-colour and everyday designs.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make or sell the things people buy for a celebration: paper plates and napkins, balloons, banners, tableware, decorations and the catalogues and shops that bring them together. Party-supply brands sit at many different points in the trade, from small design studios that print their own papers to wholesale makers and national retail chains, and a single name can turn up on a supermarket shelf, in a mail-order catalogue and on a party table at home.

A party brand’s identity is usually carried less by one product than by colour, pattern and a recognisable name, because the company behind it may have changed hands, moved its production or widened its range far beyond where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its goods are actually designed and made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its goods are made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A party range inside a Wisconsin tableware group.

Since 2007 Creative Converting has grown alongside Hoffmaster’s other acquisitions. Hoffmaster’s timeline lists InnoWare in 2011, which it says took the company into paper plates; the GMSP Company in 2013, for specialty printing and contract manufacturing; Lapaco in 2015, to strengthen service in Canada; the Aardvark paper straw company in 2018; and Paterson paper in 2023. PE Professional added the September 2008 purchase of the lace and linen paper makers Brooklace and Smith-Lee.

The owners of the group changed along the way. PE Professional reported that Kohlberg sold Hoffmaster Group to Metalmark Capital in December 2011, and that Wellspring Capital Management completed its purchase of the company after a deal announced on 20 October 2016, with Robert W. Baird & Co. advising Hoffmaster. The same report quoted the company describing itself as a North American designer, manufacturer and supplier of decorated, premium disposable tableware. Through these changes the company has stayed in Wisconsin. Hoffmaster’s locations page lists its headquarters and foodservice manufacturing in Oshkosh, a manufacturing facility in Clintonville, further plants in Oconto, Wisconsin, and Sparks, Nevada, an office in Indianapolis, and the Lapaco division in Quebec.

Clintonville is where the consumer products are made. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation said in July 2026 that the Clintonville facility manufactures consumer products including paper plates, napkins, table covers and baking paper, and announced an expansion there; Wisconsin Public Radio reported on the plan on 10 July 2026, quoting chief executive Craig Cappel. Hoffmaster’s timeline also records a patent for paper plate technology in 2025 and the launch that year of what it calls SureSurve technology, which it says improves the strength of its plates. PE Professional described the group’s products in 2016 as napkins, plates, placemats and table covers, sold to foodservice distributors, retail, grocery, mass-merchant and club-store customers.

For a design guide, Creative Converting shows how a party tableware brand works as a system rather than a single pattern: solid colours that match across every piece, with seasonal and occasion prints layered on top and collections planned to be combined. Compare a New York party-goods maker in our Amscan brand guidelines and a Pennsylvania decorations company in our Beistle brand guidelines. For this guide we use tablecloth blue, party pink and balloon yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Creative Converting’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.