Stephanie Hamling, owner of Southern Girl Soapery, sells her products through Bourbon & Boots. Hamling and other vendors said they were owed money when B&B was acquired by a new owner.
Assets of Little Rock retail website Bourbon & Boots were sold to a new acquisition company last month, and that has left some of its vendors wondering whether they will be paid for merchandise sold under the previous ownership.
Several vendors, including those who will work with the new management, said they are still owed payment from past invoices — a liability the new management said it never assumed.
In fact, the chairman of the acquisition company said in an interview with Arkansas Business last week that he didn’t assume any liabilities from the old management. Under the deal, his company acquired the “brand” of Bourbon & Boots, leaving Bourbon & Boots Inc., which was formed in 2012, still on the hook for vendor payments and its old lease.
“For someone to get so spun up in nine days if they want to post some false narratives online and contact a business editor tells me perhaps their anger is really with the past ownership,” said Rod Ford, chairman of Bourbon & Boots Acquisition Co., which acquired B&B’s assets. “It can’t be with the present ownership. We haven’t done anything except communicate with the vendor community.”
Ford was referring to comments posted online in response to an Arkansas Business story on the sale. Ford himself joined vendors in posting comments.
The previous owner, Matt Price, asked to have questions for this story sent to him by email last week but then didn’t respond by email or return phone messages.
Failure to Communicate
Several vendors said there has been a lack of communication from both the old and new management during the transition.
Customers ordered directly from the Bourbon & Boots website and vendors would receive notice of the orders, ship products directly to the customer and then send invoices to the company. Bourbon & Boots would later send payment, minus a commission.
But the vendors described months of delayed invoices, some of which remain unpaid, despite assurances from Price.
The amount owed varies by vendor — $100 here, a few thousand dollars there. But the payables add up considering the B&B vendor universe of about 500 artisans and creators.
Meanwhile, the new company has stated in mass memos to all vendors — the only communication some vendors have had — that it is only responsible for invoices on or after the acquisition date, while not addressing specific inquiries from some vendors.
Stephanie Hamling, the owner of Little Rock’s Southern Girl Soapery, has been doing business with Bourbon & Boots since November 2012. After January of this year, Hamling noticed that her invoices to the company started going unpaid or were being paid late.
Hamling said that the missing income from her busy Christmas season put a drag on investing for the next few months.
“You count on Christmas income to build your new year,” Hamling said.
Hamling said she sent weekly reminders to the management and was told that there were “good things on the horizon.” But after the sale of the company’s assets, she was still owed money — an amount Hamling didn’t want to disclose but which she called “substantial” for her small business.
Hamling said she received a notice from the old management after the sale, along with a partial payment and a note that said it was “full and final satisfaction of all outstanding invoices.”
Hamling said she sells her products in stores across the country, but she’s never been faced with a situation like the one she’s in now.
“This is a unique experience for me. If any other companies have changed hands, I haven’t missed out on any money,” Hamling said.
Growing Frustration
Chris Gray, the owner of Rustic Post, which sells home decor artwork out of McKinney, Texas, said he hasn’t heard from the new owners except for four form emails that went out to all vendors. He said he was never provided with contact information for Price, and that he didn’t know how to collect on his outstanding invoices.
Gray said he told the new owners he wouldn’t be able to fill orders until he was paid the $2,400 he is owed. Later that day, he said, his products were removed from the website. Posts on the company’s Facebook page were also removed.
“I don’t know what my options are really,” Gray said.
Briana Moore, the owner of Larkmartin Soaps of Hot Springs, said she was one of the few vendors who decided to cut ties early when her invoices went unpaid. She said she submitted an invoice in late January, then followed up with eight emails, three or four voicemails and finally a physical letter sent through the mail. When all of that drew no response from Price, Moore canceled her account at the end of April.
Moore said she also received partial payment after the sale, but that it was only about 20 percent of what she was owed. The payment included a note similar to Hamling’s, stating that it would be considered “full and final” payment for the invoices along with “Good luck!”
Moore said that she has filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office and has been communicating with more than a dozen other vendors seeking payment.
“Really it’s not about the money anymore; we probably won’t see another penny,” she said. “I just would like the public to realize that the small businesses that helped build Bourbon & Boots are not getting any compensation.”
Staying Positive
While all of the vendors contacted by Arkansas Business said they were still owed money, some are hopeful that the new owner will turn things around.
Claire Bruce-Benes, the owner of Sloan + Themis, a jewelry-maker based in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, said her experience with the old B&B was largely positive. She said her accountant is reviewing how much she’s owed, but that she was looking forward to working with the new owner.
Sloan + Themis was already seeing good results, she said. An invoice submitted the Friday before Memorial Day weekend was paid within two hours.
“If someone pays you for a same-day invoice and you’re a manufacturer, that’s usually a really good sign,” she said.
Christy Bourns Ward, the owner of Robinson Lane of Little Rock, which sells handmade jewelry, said she was still owed money from three months of invoices after a partial payment from the old management and a smaller payment from the new ownership.
But Ward said she was hopeful that her sales under the new ownership will help her recoup her losses.
“This is something I don’t think a lot of small vendors ever deal with. … I’ve learned a lot and I’m very optimistic, and excited to work with the new ownership,” she said. “I’m also proud of what the old ownership developed and created and proud to be a part of it.”
Ford said in an interview last week that 125 vendors had signed on with the new B&B within the first nine days and that more were being contacted. He said he has also asked those vendors if they feel his company owes them money and already paid a “fair amount.”
Ford said that the “business system” behind the old B&B was “so immature and so fractured that it looked like a lot of risk in it.” He said that an asset purchase was a way to avoid incurring that liability.
“It’s not a play to try to avoid any liabilities because, as I understand it, the dollars involved with some of these vendors are very, very small related to the value of Bourbon & Boots. So this was not a play at all to avoid anything.”
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