The furniture manufacturing and retail company Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams announced that it is shutting down all its operations due to a sudden loss of financing.
It was reported that many of the company’s estimated 800 employees received word of the shutdown and their layoff via a letter posted at the company’s factories and stores by the Stephens Group, an Arkansas-based equity firm that bought the company from Gold and Williams in 2015.
“Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams has recently and unexpectedly learned that we are unable to continue business operations,” the letter read in part. “As you may know, the current economic climate has presented significant challenges to the furniture industry… [The company] has recently and unexpectedly learned that we are unable to secure critical financing to continue business operations.”
The two men, who originally named the company Mitchell Gold, bought the company back in 2002 with a group of New York investors and renamed the organization Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. Williams and Gold sold the company once again in 2015 to the Stephens Group while remaining on the company’s board and in company management.
“I was devastated and in shock. Both Bob and I are,” Gold said upon learning of the shutdown. “And if I had to use one word, it’s heartbroken.”