Coronavirus has ravaged Italy, shut down hotels and wiped out retail stores. Operating in any one of those markets would be brutal to a business; all three is a perfect storm.
Anichini, the designer and maker of luxury bedding, linens and home furnishings, filed for bankruptcy protection after having its business upended by some of the hardest-hit areas of COVID-19.
The Tunbridge company sources much of its fabrics from mills in Italy, and the hotel industry is its biggest customer. Anichini also has a retail store in Quechee and sells online to customers, both of which have suffered from massive pullback in consumer spending.
“Many of our suppliers are in Italy. Hotels are a major market. Customers travel from around the world to visit our store. We could have weathered any of these challenges, possibly more,” Anichini owner Susan Dollenmaier wrote to me in an email. “But to fight on many fronts while dealing with COVID-19 was more than a little company can bear.”
Last month Anichini filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, which allows a company to continue operating while it negotiates with creditors. The Small Business Reorganization Act, signed into law last year to streamline the bankruptcy process for small businesses, might make it easier for Dollenmaier to emerge in control, although the proceeding could be complicated by challenges from a former investor in the company who holds a $600,000 secured claim.
Anichini’s bankruptcy petition lists $953,000 in assets, $1.1 million in secured claims and $362,000 in unsecured claims.
This is not the first time that Dollenmaier has fought to keep her company going.
In 2014, several of Dollenmaier’s former properties in Tunbridge, which she acquired during an aggressive growth period and then lost in foreclosure during the recession, were auctioned off.
At its peak in the early 2000s, Anichini had nearly 90 employees with revenues of nearly $20 million and stores in West Lebanon, Burlington, New York, Los Angeles and Manchester, Vt.
In recent years, in the wake of the Great Recession, Dollenmaier scaled back her business to focus on selling her lines to the hotel industry, interior designers and a smaller retail operation.
Documents filed in Anichini’s bankruptcy proceeding reveal just how much smaller the company is today: Anichini now has 17 employees and had revenues of $1.9 million in 2019.
“After the crash, the market changed so much,” Dollenmaier said, referring to how the home furnishings industry changed in the wake of the previous recession. “Many of our customers closed and never reopened their doors.”
Since the coronavirus hit, Dollenmaier said, she’s had to furlough five people and put everyone else on half-time.
The company has been approved for a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government and, although the store in Quechee is closed under the state’s pandemic guidelines, “e-commerce is holding up nicely,” Dollenmaier said.
“I view this as a complete restart of the company,” Dollenmaier said of the bankruptcy filing. “Despite all we’ve been through the past 12 years, we still have a strong customer base.”
As a store where you can pick up livestock feed, baby chicks or dog food, West Lebanon Feed & Supply may not spring to mind as a go-to hand sanitizer destination.
But Curt Jacques, who has been in the farm, gardening and pet supply business for 28 years, knows how to get his hands on what is needed.
Jacques, owner of the landmark West Lebanon business, has arranged with Silo Distillery for the Windsor craft spirits maker to supply Jacques’ store with 4,300 8-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer.
As readers of this column know, Silo Distillery last month began making hand sanitizer to meet the demand for supplies that have dried up during the coronavirus pandemic.
Called Helping Hands Sanitizer and selling for $9.50, all the proceeds will go to displaced restaurant workers at Salt hill Pub, Jesse’s and Molly’s, Lui Lui, Three Tomatoes and Enfield House of Pizza who have been furloughed because of COVID-19.
“We wanted the focus to be on restaurant workers who we all know and give a lot here every day and have been hit hard” as their employers have been ordered closed to reduce spread of the virus, Jacques explained.
The goal is to raise $20,000 for the workers.
And note: The hand sanitizer’s alcohol is made from Vermont-grown grain — corn, rye and wheat — which Silo purchases from a farm in the western part of the state, which Jacques steered the distillery to several years ago when they were looking to source local ingredients.
Unlike commercial sanitizers that are scented, Helping Hands sanitizer is odorless but does have a faint whiff of its Vermont-native ingredients.
“It actually smells a little like corn mash,” Jacques said.
The theme of this column over the past several weeks, readers have surely noticed, is how many in the Upper Valley — whether they are donating face masks or helping to secure critical government financial assistance — are stepping up to aid people and business in distress.
One company figuratively (and literally) has people’s backs.
Ink Factory Clothing in Claremont, which silk screens logos on apparel, is donating $4 per shirt to charity on special orders of T-shirts it has designed that depict “#essential” on the front against an outline of the state of New Hampshire with the purchaser’s name and logo on the back.
Orders are set at a minimum of $240 for 25 shirts, which means that each order generates a minimum of $100 for charity. Proceeds are donated to the New Hampshire Food Bank, a program of Catholic Charities New Hampshire.
The 11-year-old company, which has seven employees, “has been pretty severely impacted” by the stay-at-home directives because “so much of our business is related to events, school and sports seasons,” Ink Factory Clothing owner Jeff Barrette said.
Hypertherm, Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center, Joe’s Family Car Care in Claremont and Griffin Construction in Alstead, N.H., are some groups and companies that have already put in orders, according to Barrette.
“We knew this was a time for us not to make a lot of money,” Barrette said about the T-shirt project. “But we want to keep our people busy and do good at the same time.”
Contact me through the social distance of email at jlippman@vnews.com.
