Have Anchor Threads Been Discontinued?

Since November this year, I’ve been inundated with messages from the US with reports that Anchor Threads have been discontinued and are no longer being carried by any retailers. But is there any truth behind this story?
 

The Background: DMC Threads Purchases Anchor Threads

Back in August of 2023, we broke a story that DMC had purchased Anchor Threads possibly creating a monopoly over the embroidery thread world, however, there were two key pieces of information we need to take into consideration with these new rumors.
 
The first is that DMC purchased all of Anchor threads other than the US distribution rights. This felt like an odd choice at the time considering Coats threads were a direct competitor to DMC (and in turn, Anchor threads considering its new owners), but it could be a masterstroke (more on that later).
The second thing to consider is that part of the deal stipulated that Mendalez would run the Anchor thread company for a whole year before DMC took control.
And this sets the scene.
 

Are Anchor Threads Discontinued?

No, however Anchor Threads have lost their US distributor, so finding stockists of Anchor Threads in North America could be very hard.
 

What’s Happened?

So spoiling the punch here, either DMC has chosen not to continue using the US distributor (its competitor) or Coats has chosen not to distribute Anchor threads anymore.
To make things a little more annoying, the US distributor sent a bit of a cryptic message out to its stockists, adding fuel to the fire, but we have been able to confirm both with DMC directly, and Anchor’s EU distributor, that the brand has not been discontinued, and there are big plans afoot (although we don’t know what those are just yet).
 

Anchor is now part of the DMC Group in the UK and Europe, it has not been discontinued.
DMC Company Customer Service Representative

 
At first, I thought this might be a weird move of the DMC company, but looking into the details here a bit longer, I think it might be a very clever move by the Coats company to remove Anchor threads, a direct competitor, from its market.
You see, by retaining the rights to sell in the US, and then refusing to stock in the US, Coats and its sub-companies have effectively stopped the DMC company from selling Anchor threads in its market.
Now, this will create a race for both DMC and Coats to fill the gap and I think we’re likely to see both more DMC and Coats threads in stores across the US going forward.
 

What About The Rest Of The World?

There are no problems!
 
The DMC company is still manufacturing, stocking, and distributing Anchor threads, and there are apparently big plans for the brand going forward. Right now Anchor threads are actually at a higher sale price than they have been in the past so we would be very surprised to see the brand discontinued, even if it does compete with Anchor.
 
Do you think this is a shrewd move by the Coats company or could Anchor threads be on the chopping block?

Happy stitching,
Lord Libidan