Those of you who carry Lenox or Department 56 can breath a bit easier. A private equity group led by Clarion Capital Partners LLC purchased the company out of bankruptcy court this week, after the courts opened bidding for a second time.
Unlike the original deal with KPS Partners, the Clarion package includes the Deptartment 56, Dansk, and Gorham brands. The deal should close within the next month, with past Waterford CEO, Peter Cameron, at the helm.
Thank goodness. Those little amazons in the Dickens Village were getting nervous.
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Attention, Twitterati interested the National Stationery Show-—I just set up a new hashtag: #nss. We now have a place to gush about all things paper…
1. You don’t work for [insert: name of a financial institution], who most of the public 
Credit cards and credit lines give retailers headaches these days-—especially small retailers whose accounts receivable department is pretty much the owner’s desk. At no time in history has the landscape been so muddled.
According to a fax sent to retailers by William Arthur this afternoon, twenty-three full time positions are being eliminated in the print division-—ie, the entire third shift. The plan is to try rescheduling them into first and second shifts if possible.
It’s no shock to retailers paying vendor invoices with AmEx cards that the company is suddenly pulling back the reins on available credit. I know of several storefronts who have had their credit cut back-—or worse, cut off-—in spite of good payment history.
My thoughts about “buy indie” programs are pretty well defined. I’m not a big fan of sites that make unachievable promises like high Google rankings, streams of new customers, and exponentially increased revenue-—especially when they ask retailers to pay a hefty fee to participate (see 
Independent retailers, you have a champion in Canada. Ironically, it’s someone from the ecommerce world who understands the importance of supporting local brick and mortars.
