Singer: The Downfall of a Great American Manufacturer
23rd September 2026
Over the past two months, six readers have written in about sewing machines. I have never once mentioned sewing machines in this newsletter. All the complaints arrived independently, through the tip line.
I must admit that I am not a sewist. The extent of my capability is limited to ugly patches and button repairs, so I was hesitant to investigate the category at all. But given the sheer number and conformity of the reader messages, I knew there must be an interesting story here.
The general shape of all of the complaints is that Singer is riding on a reputation it earned a long time ago. Readers describe machines that are now plastic, sealed, and generally not worth repairing.
Several found that brands they assumed were competitors turn out to have the same owner. One reader bought a new Singer that broke in under a year. They also bought a Singer from the ‘50s, for a fraction of the price, that still runs.
The pattern is one we’ve covered many times before. A market that most buyers cannot navigate, where reputations carry little meaning and honest information is hard to come by.
What makes this investigation worth your time, whether or not you sew, is how effectively it demonstrates what happens when a reputation stops being something a company protects and instead becomes something it extracts.
What follows is the story of a once-great American company. I’ll also cover who actually makes the machines you see for sale, and what I’m planning on buying.
My grandmother had a pedal-powered Singer sewing machine with which she made all of the clothes her seven children wore through the Depression until they graduated from high school. My cousin inherited it from her when she died in ’98 and says it’s still going strong.
My wife has a Brother machine that is never used; I don’t recall ever having seen her machine-sew anything (knitting is her thing). I do any sewing that needs to be done and I sew by hand, as I have since I was first taught how to sew (by my grandmother) at age six. This proved lucrative when I was in the Navy.