The cutting machine on half the craft tables in America started as a product of a Utah County craft company. Cricut, Inc., the publicly traded company in South Jordan, says in its own SEC filings that it was incorporated in Utah in June 1969 as Provo Craft & Novelty, Inc., and that it changed its name to Cricut in March 2018. Before it was a machine company, it was a craft store.
That much is documented. A good deal of the story people repeat is not, and this page separates the two. Everything below comes from the company's securities filings, Utah newspapers and the company's own pages. Where the record runs out, we say so.
The store, 1963
The fullest early account is a June 2007 Deseret News business profile. It describes "Spanish Fork-based Provo Craft & Novelty" as a company that started in 1963 as a retail craft store and grew into a craft and hobby manufacturer and wholesaler with a dozen retail stores and worldwide sales.
The same profile is careful about the founding. Robert Workman, the executive most associated with the company's growth, had worked in his father's store, and he later bought the business from his parents. So the 1963 store was a family business that Workman took over, not one he started. We did not find a source that names his parents as founders on the record or gives the first store's address.
Two dates float around for the start, and they are not in conflict. The newspaper's 1963 is when the retail store began. The SEC filing's June 1969 is when Provo Craft & Novelty, Inc. was incorporated. A store can trade for years before it incorporates.
Roberts, and the question this page cannot settle
Anyone who shopped for crafts in Utah Valley before 2012 remembers Roberts (the stores traded as Roberts Arts and Crafts and, in some coverage, Roberts Crafts). On December 1, 2011, the Daily Herald reported that every Roberts store would close in January and the company would move to online sales only. The paper said Roberts "first opened in Provo in 1963," grew to as many as 11 stores at its peak in 2006, and was headquartered in American Fork. It named stores in American Fork, Orem, Provo, South Jordan and Washington.
Set the two newspaper accounts side by side and they describe the same shape: a Utah County craft retailer born in 1963, with about a dozen stores in the mid-2000s. Many people in the valley treat Roberts as Provo Craft's retail chain, and that is what the roadmap for this page assumed.
We could not confirm it. The Herald's 2011 story never mentions Provo Craft, and the Deseret News profile never uses the name Roberts. A 2005 Deseret News brief on a new Roberts store in Clinton also leaves ownership out. Until a filing, a corporate record or a dated news story ties the two together, the connection is a strong likelihood, not a fact, and this page will not state it as one. If you have a primary source, we want to see it.
One small coda from the record: the 2005 brief put the new Roberts store at 1803 West 1800 North in Clinton. Twenty years later, when JOANN published its first list of 2025 store closures, the Clinton JOANN on that list was at 1803 West 1800 North, Suite G1, according to FOX 13. The same craft corner, two chains, both gone.
Why Roberts closed
The Herald's reasons were the ones that closed regional craft chains across the country: a hard economy and big-box competition. The paper noted that Hobby Lobby had recently opened stores in Orem and American Fork and that Michaels had a store in Orem. Our guide to craft stores in Utah Valley after JOANN picks up the story from there: those same big boxes are now most of what is left.
Roberts also rode the scrapbooking wave on the way up. In a 2004 Daily Universe story, a Roberts employee in Provo said the store had gone "from one or two aisles to half the store" in scrapbooking supplies within three or four years. That boom, and why it centered here, is its own story in our history of the Utah scrapbooking boom.
From retailer to manufacturer
The Deseret News profile dates Provo Craft's big turn to about 1995: roughly 12 years before the article, executives moved the company into manufacturing, hiring staff and forming overseas partnerships, a shift the paper said strongly improved profit margins. It also reported that the company had not had an unprofitable year in the preceding two decades.
That move set up everything after it. A company that designs and sources its own products can sell to every craft store in the country, not only its own. By 2010 the company's lawyers at Jones Day were describing it as "a Utah-based manufacturer and retailer of hobby and craft products," in a note on that year's sale of a majority stake by Sorenson Capital, the Utah private equity firm, to BAML Capital Partners, a Bank of America subsidiary.
The Cricut
The Deseret News profile says that under James Thornton, who became CEO in 2005, Provo Craft launched training programs for retailers and introduced the Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter, and that the product helped make 2006 the highest sales year in company history.
That is the earliest dated, sourced reference we found. You will see 2003 given online as the year Provo Craft invented the Cricut. We could not trace that date to a primary source, so this page does not use it. What the record supports is narrower: the machine was on the market and selling well by 2006.
The early machines cut shapes from cartridges, physical plug-ins sold by design set, which made them a natural partner for scrapbooking. The company's own later filings describe the next leap. Its annual report for 2025 says that in 2014 it "transformed the household electronic cutting machine market" with the introduction of its Cut Smart technology on the Cricut Explore. From there the business moved toward connected machines, its Design Space software and paid subscriptions.
The name change and the IPO
Provo Craft & Novelty became Cricut, Inc. in March 2018, and the company redomiciled as a Delaware corporation in September 2020, according to its prospectus. It went public in March 2021, pricing its initial public offering at $20 a share and listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol CRCT. The company itself offered 13,250,000 shares.
The prospectus captured the company at a peak. Revenue was $340 million in 2018, $487 million in 2019 and $959 million in 2020, as people stuck at home bought machines. It reported 4.3 million users at the end of 2020. It also disclosed two facts worth knowing about the company's structure: after the offering, Petrus Trust Company and its affiliates would hold about 61.4 percent of the voting power, and the company was "primarily dependent on a single China-based manufacturer" for its machines.
Cricut now
The company's annual report for 2025, filed in March 2026, gives the current picture:
| Measure | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | $765.1 million | $712.5 million | $708.8 million |
As of December 31, 2025, it reported nearly 5.9 million active users and just over 3.09 million paid subscribers, and over 700 employees, 185 of them outside the United States, spread across 29 states and 25 countries. Its principal offices are at 10855 South River Front Parkway in South Jordan, across the county line in Salt Lake County. The craft companies still based in Utah County are mapped in the craft-supply manufacturers of Utah County.
The machines themselves now come in generations. Cricut's own shop listed, in October 2026, the Joy 2 at $99, the Explore 5 at $199 and the Maker 5 at $349 for the machine alone, with bundles above those. Our guide to Cricut, vinyl and heat-press work in Utah Valley covers what those machines cost to run and what selling their output involves.
Why this belongs to Utah County's story
Provo.com has told the origin stories of Qualtrics and of the genealogy industry, and the pattern here is similar: a local, family-scale business grows by making something its own community already wanted. In Utah Valley that community was large and organized, and by the early 2000s a Provo craft store was giving half its floor to scrapbooking alone.
The record supports a few firm claims. A craft retailer began in 1963. It incorporated as Provo Craft & Novelty in 1969 and was based in Spanish Fork by 2007. It turned itself into a manufacturer in the mid-1990s, put the Cricut on the market by the middle of the next decade, renamed itself after its machine in 2018 and listed on the Nasdaq in 2021. Spanish Fork's own short history rarely mentions any of this, which is part of why this page exists.
The rest, including the Cricut's exact birth year and whether the Roberts stores were the same company, is still open.
Related Guides
- Craft Stores in Utah Valley After JOANN
- The Utah Scrapbooking Boom
- Cricut, Vinyl and Heat-Press in Utah Valley
- Silicon Slopes, Explained
- The Qualtrics Story
- The Genealogy Industry in Utah Valley
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Cricut founded in Utah County?
Who founded Provo Craft?
When was the Cricut machine invented?
Was Roberts Crafts owned by Provo Craft?
When did Roberts Crafts close?
Where is Cricut headquartered now?
How big is Cricut today?
Can I sell things I make with a Cricut?
Sources
The facts in this guide were checked against these sources. Hours, fees and rules change, so confirm anything time-sensitive with the source before you go. How we make Provo.com.
- Cricut, Inc. final prospectus (424B4), March 2021, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR). Checked October 20, 2026.
- Cricut, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 (filed March 4, 2026), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR). Checked October 20, 2026.
- Provo Craft & Novelty completes sale of majority stake by Sorenson Capital to BAML Capital Partners (March 2010), Jones Day. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Cutting machines (shop listing, prices), Cricut. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Selling things you've made using Cricut designs: Angel Policy, Cricut (blog). Checked October 20, 2026.
- About Cricut, Cricut. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Provo Craft keeps pace with trends (June 3, 2007), Deseret News. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Roberts Arts and Crafts to close (Dec. 1, 2011), Daily Herald. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Roberts Arts and Crafts to open store in Clinton (Oct. 6, 2005), Deseret News. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Joann is closing 500 stores nationwide; here are the 3 closing in Utah (Feb. 12, 2025), FOX 13 News. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Scrapbook gives fun for all ages (Feb. 13, 2004), The Daily Universe (BYU). Checked October 20, 2026.
