BLUPRINT, RECENTLY REBRANDED, LAYS OFF 17 EMPLOYEES

Bluprint, a Denver-based platform providing crafting tutorials and lifestyle streaming services, laid off 17 employees as part of a restructuring after NBCUniversal Cable’s purchase of the company last year. But the company, formerly called Craftsy Unlimited, is adding 17 positions in the areas of social media, editorial and producing content. It anticipates having 10 more openings, according to Bluprint. Most of the positions eliminated Thursday were e-commerce jobs, such as sale of crafts materials.

“Since our purchase of Craftsy over a year ago, we’ve invested heavily in the business and have expanded and evolved its focus from a transactional, digital retail business to a new subscriptionbased model called Bluprint with significantly enhanced content and commerce offerings. In order to support these new, expanding growth areas it was necessary to restructure the organization,” Bluprint said in a prepared statement.

Bluprint said it has 205 employees and an additional 100 temporary and contract workers.

NBCUniversial announced the rebranding of Craftsy last month, saying it would help “dramatically expand and enhance its unique content and commerce capabilities and fully exploit the power of NBCUniversal to help accelerate its growth.”

Craftsy started as Sympoz, which produced educational videos, and expanded as it discovered the passionate community of quilters and knitting circles. It hired experts in the field, and flew them to Denver to record training videos. Sympoz adopted the name Craftsy in 2011.