The closing of a school uniform supply company may leave parents of some area private schools scrambling to find clothing for their children.
DENNIS Uniforms announced it closed its corporate headquarters in Portland, OR, and its 22 stores – including one in Sandy Springs – last week. No warning was given.
The company’s notice to the Oregon Dislocated Worker Unit was dated Oct. 19, the same day 111 employees were laid off. A union that represented many of the Portland employees was notified at the same time.
The door to the Sandy Springs DENNIS Uniforms store at 6348 Roswell Road, Ste. 10B, Sandy Springs, was locked on Tuesday, with no notice visibly posted. The store’s voicemail message was unchanged, listing hours and days of operations despite its closure.
“Due to the severe financial distress our company has been experiencing over the past several months, we are invoking the ‘faltering company’ exception under the WARN Act,” Lawrence Perkins, interim CEO of DENNIS Uniform, said in his letter to Oregon’s Rapid Response coordinator.
Although the DENNIS Uniform website said the closure of its stores and customer care center was temporary, the WARN Notice tells a different story. The layoffs are expected to be permanent with no employees being recalled, Perkins said in his letter. Its Facebook and Instagram social media sites have been taken down.
Perkins said the company failed to obtain the financing or additional business to avoid layoffs and continue its operations.
Previous investors in the company have included Origami Capital Partners, Hauser Private Equity, and its fund partner SBJ Capital. Origami Capital and SBJ Capital have removed DENNIS Uniforms from their portfolio listings online. Hauser Private Equity still listed the shuttered company on its portfolio list as of Tuesday afternoon, naming SBJ as its partner in the direct investment.
Mark Berger, owner of Educational Outfitters of Atlanta, said he has been contacting schools whose uniforms were supplied by DENNIS Uniforms for the past three days letting them know his company can become their new supplier. He said it’s possible the schools first heard the company had closed from him.
He said parents have a problem when their child needs another shirt, pants, or other clothing.
“They can’t get it where they got it last week, so the schools are going to have to scramble to figure out who else can do this for us,” Berger said.
Berger said his business is not struggling, and he was sure Flynn O’Hara, another Sandy Springs uniform business, was also doing fine.
He saw Parker Uniforms close its doors in 2018 after declaring bankruptcy and blames private equity firms chasing after profits. The difference is he and other companies look after the schools to keep their uniform business successful, he said.
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