When a business shuts down like that, it generally means they ran out of money to lose.
Reading between the lines on that glassdoor.com page, it seems like these guys have been broke for a long time, are probably way over-extended with every supplier they have, and their bank finally cut them off. Its hard on the employees to shut down like that, but (pure speculation here) my guess is there literally isn't any money to pay them with anyway.
Sad stuff.
The other group of people who often get burned in a situation like this are suppliers who did get paid any time in the last 90 days. The courts can go back and demand that those payments be returned so that the money can be distributed evenly over all suppliers. The idea is it prevents the owner from making sure his brother-in-law gets paid, at the expense of some other supplier. That happened to me a few years ago, and as a small business, it really sucks. You think everything is fine, and all of the sudden you get a notice from the court that that $3000 payment you received two months ago has to be returned, and you will probably (if you are lucky) only see 5% of it when its all said and done.
The actual filing says $0-$50,000:
http://www.photobusinessforum.com/images/calumetphoto_case_14-08908.pdf
a) wow.
but b) I'm confused.
Only $50,000 in assets? Surely they have to tick that as Gross assets and not Net.
I've probably got more than that as furnishings in my house. They've listed all the big boys as creditors: Canon, hasselblad, mamiya, phase one, cambo, fuji, tamron, zeiss, manfrotto. Surely with a handful of cameras on the floor, even one or two 645 digital backs alone are worth more than $50k.
Also, they're ticked Number of creditors: 1-49, but there's 36 pages of creditors listed.
Somethin' ain't right. Was this form filled in by an accountant who actually knew the business? Or just cobbled together in 5 minutes by anyone?
What really baffles me about the whole debacle is that what, at most 2 years ago, they bought out Penn Camera here in DC and took over their stores. They winnowed the chain down from seven locations to three, but the three they kept seemed to be doing pretty good business. At least until they started shorting stock on a regular basis.
I lost contact with them months ago, which seemed odd. Strange coincidence as I've actually been working behind the scenes this week to remove their logos etc from APUG. We're announcing two new Partner level sponsors today (more on that soon!)
The actual filing says $0-$50,000:
http://www.photobusinessforum.com/images/calumetphoto_case_14-08908.pdf
via the Phoblographer: All their US stores are closed and, judging from the Facebook posts, employees had no idea they were out of a job today. Their website has also gone down.
I don't understand why Calumet's European operations haven't been effected .
via the Phoblographer: All their US stores are closed and, judging from the Facebook posts, employees had no idea they were out of a job today. Their website has also gone down.
I looked 'em up on Facebook and their site says after 75 years their stores in the US are closed but the ones in Europe will continue.
Calumet is one that carries a lot of film stuff.
There is a big Calumet branch about forty miles from my house in Manchester Scott but I've never been there it's out of town on an industrial estate and I can't be bothered to go because I can order from their website.They're probably a wholly-owned subsidiary with discreet accounting systems and financing. So they can share the name and the overall brand appeal without being financially interdependent.
Wow...I was planning on going there on my days off, as they are (or I guess were) based in Chicago.
Central Camera is still in Chicago on Wabash street and can take care of your film needs.
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