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Business owner Olivier Peardon keeps a brass plaque in his loft office in Port Chester that is a treasured relic of his family and business heritage. "Brunschwig & Fils Inc.," the engraving reads. "To the Trade Only."
Until this year, when the once-thriving company's assets were sold in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court auction, Peardon represented the fourth generation in his family to head Brunschwig & Fils, a luxury fabrics company that served designers in the high-end home decorating industry from showrooms in the U.S. and abroad. He has continued in the design trade as the head of Hinson & Co., a fabrics, wall coverings and lighting business that he and his father acquired two years ago to expand Brunschwig's market reach and save the company that had been their family's business since 1900, first in France and most recently in North White Plains.
But the Brunschwig & Fils brand now is owned by Kravet Inc., a to-the-trade home furnishings company in Bethpage, Long Island. About 60 jobs were lost in Westchester with the closing this year of Brunschwig's headquarters and warehouse operations at 75 Virginia Road. Kravet, whose initial stalking-horse bid for the company's assets was $6.5 million, in March paid about $10 million at a bankruptcy auction.
At its peak, Brunschwig & Fils had about 125 employees in North White Plains, where it moved from Manhattan in 1984 after buying a former car dealership building, Pearson said. Leasing 18 showrooms, it at one time had 325 employees in all.
"The company catered to the 1 or 2 percent of the world at the very high end of luxury decorating," Peardon said. "The company was a very, very rich company for very many years."
"Brunschwig & Fils is a classic case" in business bankruptcy, said Charles D. Benjamin, CEO of...