Calumet Photographic Abruptly Closes All U.S. Stores, Files Chapter 7 [UPDATE]
By Lisa White in News on Mar 13, 2014 7:10PM
[UPDATE, 3:05 p.m.; PetaPixel has an exclusive interview with a former employee that just went up. It might shed some light on why the company abruptly closed all their stores and filed Chapter 7. Check it out here.]
Chicago-based Calumet Photographic abruptly shuttered all their U.S. stores and filed for Chapter 7 liquidation Thursday morning. The Chicago Tribune reports Calumet's bankruptcy filing lists between $50 million and $100 million in assets and $10 million to $50 million in liabilities.
The Chicago photography company first opened in 1939 and has locations across the U.S. and Europe (a statement from the company on their Facebook account said that “European stores will continue, but they have now taken their Facebook account offline), including two locations in Chicago. Their Goose Island location was a hub for not only many professional photographers in need of supplies, repairs or renting equipment but also a great resource for photography students and the casual photographer.
Their website was down as of this morning, and only two messages appeared on their Facebook account earlier today. As of 1:45 p.m. local time, the Facebook page is no longer online The first one was announcing the closing:
"After 75 years of business, it is with a heavy heart that we announce our immediate closing in the United States (our European stores will continue)," the post reads. "It has been a joy to share our passion for photography with you all of these years. We'll miss each other and we'll miss all of our customers. Thank you for everything."
Two hours later the following message was posted:
“Stay tuned, as we are exploring opportunities to reopen select locations to keep serving our customers. We will post any updates here if there are any.”
What is especially disheartening, besides the closing of a long standing institution, is the fact employees had no idea this was coming. One Chicago manager left a fond farewell in the comments section on the now-missing Facebook page, while the spouse of another former employee was outraged, stating that there was “NO HR mention, NO mention of final paycheck, NO mention of what to do about insurance” and going on to ask “what about the personal items my wife had at the store? She was told that no one can enter anymore except a manager.”
Another big issue is the fact many customers have equipment at locations for cleaning or repairs, or currently have equipment they rented from Calumet and aren’t sure what to do about returning it. Since the website is down, the only way angry customers have been able to attempt to reach out to the company was through Facebook, but now it looks like even that avenue has been eliminated. One customer asked earlier how to get his camera back that was being cleaned since the phones are already disconnected while many others voice concerns about deposits or if they should just keep the equipment they have on loan from the company.
While Calumet hasn’t released a statement yet about how they’ll handle these situations, some companies are already taking to their own Facebook pages to let customers know they’ll honor any Calumet gift card. Pro Photo Rental posted the statement “we just don’t want anyone to be left hanging by a situation that sucks” earlier after offering to honor Calumet gift cards. For now, many rightfully angry customers are left in the dark not knowing what will happen to their personal property that the store currently possesses. This isn’t the usual way a company would shut down and liquidate their assets, so we’re interested to see an official response from Calumet. The fact that all phones and websites are offline and the fact that their Facebook page, which was communicating with customers all morning, was taken down is not a good sign of what's to come.
[H/T RedEye]