From bookbinding to albums.

We R Memory Keepers traces itself to bookbinding in Utah. The company’s history page, now hosted on the American Crafts website, says that William R. Hiller and his two sons built a bookbinding business, the Provo Book Bindery, which became known for bookbinding and preservation work. Out of that trade came albums: the company says Hiller Bookbinding began making an album intended specifically for keeping memories safely and securely, as more than just a photo album.

The album business grew with scrapbooking. As the hobby spread, the company says, crafters needed high-quality, functional and creative tools as well as albums, and the brand set out to supply both. By 2014 the craft-industry writer Nancy Nally, in her trade blog Nally Studios, described the family-owned company as based in Salt Lake City and known in the industry for its albums, its tools and its Albums Made Easy pocket-scrapbooking collections, which the designer Teresa Collins designed under a licensing deal.

The same report said that the company had long been known for the quality of its faux-leather three-ring albums and its page protectors, and that it had been the original producer of the page protectors for Project Life, the pocket-page scrapbooking system, before Project Life began producing its own. It stayed a family business until the sale: Nally Studios said it was bought from the Hiller family, which had run it, and quoted Andrew Hiller as the company’s president.

Punch boards, eyelets and letterpress.

The tools gave the brand its reputation. Nally Studios wrote in June 2014 that the company had been having great success with its punch boards, tools that make everything from paper flowers to envelopes, and that it was also known for its Crop-A-Dile tools and its Sew Easy system. In September 2013, the same report said, the company had bought Lifestyle Crafts, adding the QuicKutz and L Letterpress lines of tools at a time when letterpress was growing in popularity among crafters.

The instruction pages that the American Crafts website now keeps for the brand show how wide the range became. They cover the Crop-A-Dile; the Cinch, with a Cinch 2 guide offered in English, French, Spanish and German; the Evolution and Mini Evolution; the Foil Quill; the Happy Jig; and the Precision Press. Further pages cover punch boards for envelopes, tags, banners and stitching, a trim-and-score board, a button press, a letterpress page and a bookbinding guide — the last a reminder of where the company started.

The brand’s name changed to match that range. The company says that after it joined American Crafts in 2014 it widened its tools from scrapbook-centred products to a more complete and inclusive focus that would support makers of all interests, and that, because of that change in product focus, it updated its brand name to We R Makers in 2023. It says it plans to keep making functional, quality-made products for makers around the world. The old web address, wermemorykeepers.com, now forwards to the American Crafts website, where the brand’s tools are sold under the We R Makers name and its product guides sit alongside those of its sister brands.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make tools and supplies for paper crafts: cutting machines, steel and etched dies, embossing folders, stamps, inks and adhesives. Paper-craft and die-cutting brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family businesses that began at a kitchen table or a trade-show booth to names that now belong to larger craft or office groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a specialist craft shop to a general-merchandise aisle.

A paper-craft brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single machine or die than by a name, a system of compatible parts and the projects it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its headquarters or its production, or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its tools are actually made.

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

From the Hiller family to American Crafts and beyond.

American Crafts announced in June 2014 that it had acquired We R Memory Keepers, Nally Studios reported on 18 June 2014. The report set the deal in a run of purchases American Crafts had made since 2009 as the scrapbooking industry consolidated, among them Pebbles, Crate Paper, Pink Paislee and, in April 2014, Bazzill Basics. It quoted Wayne Mitchell, then chief executive of American Crafts, saying that Andrew Hiller, his family and team had built a company that made unique and creative products, and that he looked forward to decades more of success with the We R brand. The company’s own history page also dates the move to 2014.

The ownership has moved on since. A letter now published on the American Crafts website, signed by Anthony Piperno as owner of Nicole Craft Brands, says that American Crafts and We R Makers are part of the Nicole Craft Brands family. The same letter says that the group’s US fulfilment operations were disrupted by an electrical surge at its Grand Rapids campus, in which no one was injured, and that shipping from its US warehouse had been paused while restoration experts assessed the facility; in October 2026 the website’s banner said its store was temporarily closed. The letter says the designers, product developers and educators are still working on new products and tutorials.

On its brands page, the American Crafts website presents the two names side by side: American Crafts for its designs and paper-crafting collaborations, and We R Makers for tools meant to make crafting easier and faster. The page says the group is building a united foundation for creativity that celebrates its heritage while looking ahead.

For a design guide, We R Memory Keepers shows how a bookbinder’s album business became a toolmaker’s brand, and then changed its name to fit what it had become. Compare Cricut, another Utah name in craft cutting, and Sizzix, the die-cutting brand. For this guide we use album teal, punch coral and page cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep We R Memory Keepers’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.