CUSTOM SHOP CLOSES UP OPERATIONS; CLOSURE OF 52-UNIT CHAIN FOLLOWS AN ABORTED DEAL WITH SPENCER HAYS.

Daily News Record, March, 2001 by GELLERS, STAN; PALMIERI, JEAN E.; YOUNG, VICKI

NEW YORK -- The Custom Shop has manufactured its last shirt.

Faced with a cash crunch and the unraveling of an impending sale at the eleventh hour, the venerable 52-unit specialty store chain has closed its doors.

"We've discontinued operations," Tim Belton, president and CEO, confirmed to DNR in a telephone interview. "We had a deal that was supposed to be effective Friday, but [Spencer Hays, chairman of Individualized Apparel Group,] backed out right before the signing of the final contract so we had no other choice."

Belton said Custom Shop was "not funding itself from operations" and had "exhausted all options beyond [the sale]. We were floored and devastated by the change in tactic."

Belton said Hays' company was scheduled...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.