High-End Furniture Company Expected To Close Greenwich, U.S. Stores

GREENWICH, CT — High-end furniture brand Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams has abruptly ceased operations, and is expected to close all U.S. stores including Connecticut's only physical signature location in Greenwich.

The company will layoff all of its approximately 533 employees who work at a main plant, a framing facility and a distribution center in North Carolina where the company is headquartered, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) recently filed with the North Carolina Department of Commerce

"The current economic climate has presented significant challenges to the U.S. furniture industry," said interim CEO of The Mitchell Gold Co. Chris Moye. "We have also recently and unexpectedly learned that the company is unable to secure critical financing to continue business operations. In the wake of this unfortunate development, it has now become apparent that we can no longer continue to operate."

Located at 45 E. Putnam Ave., the Greenwich Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams store opened in 2008 and is a little over 7,000 square feet.

An employee told Patch late Thursday afternoon they expected a liquidation sale to take place on Saturday, but they did not know yet when the store would officially close. The Greenwich location employs six people.

There are 25 signature stores around the country, 28 virtual stores and six outlet locations, the company's website says. A virtual store is listed in Westport.

The Taylorsville Times, a local newspaper in Taylorsville, NC, said that The Stephens Group, an Arkansas-based investment firm, has been the majority shareholder in Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams since 2014.

The Stephens Group recently invested $20 million to restructure Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, but a lender withdrew support which forced the company to close down operations, the newspaper reported.

Co-founder Mitchell Gold retired in 2019, but came back to the company in April of this year to support Moye.

Gold told the Taylorsville Times if possible he hopes to raise an estimated $25 million to $30 million to revive operations, but said he's "beyond heartbroken, depressed, frustrated, and angry," with the recent news.

Gold, who previously worked with Bloomingdale's and managed The Lane Company, founded the furniture company in 1989 with Bob Williams, a designer who was a promotions art director for Seventeen magazine.

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