When I proposed to Pam, I had already gotten a ring at Alpha Omega Jewelers in Cambridge. It was a small shop in Harvard Square, family run, with not spectacularly high or low prices. In the years since then, we used them for not only our wedding rings, but other bits of jewelry.
So, I was not without a fair amount of shock when I read this headline on the web site boston.com:
Alpha Omega liquidation sale set to start tomorrow
What was even more shocking was why they were liquidating our old family jeweler:
The investment consortium that bought the assets of Alpha Omega Jewelers in a bankruptcy court-approved sale said that the liquidation sale of the chain’s inventory will begin at its four stores tomorrow.
Everything must be sold before Ross-Simons, a Rhode Island-based chain, assumes the leases of Alpha Omega stores at Natick Collection and the Prudential Center in Boston, and items will be discounted to ensure fast sales, the consortium said.
The chain’s other two stores are located in Harvard Square and at the Burlington Mall.
According to stories in the Globe data base, Alpha Omega Jewelers filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code last month. The filing came after owner Raman Handa unexpectedly left the country with his wife, son, and daughter, prompting the company’s bank to seize Alpha Omega assets and temporarily close its stores just before Christmas.
That’s right, they were going bankrupt because the owner fled the country with his family. Suddenly my mind filled with all the plots of Jewel heists, with the thieves heading for Mexico, having deposited some of their misbegotten wealth in a Swiss Bank Account…
And to think I was served by Mr. or Mrs. Handa (I never learned their names, nor do I remember them particularly well), who might have been planning their disappearances for years!
Or perhaps it was something less glamorous and far more depressing, like mounting debts and “a threat to himself or a member of his family”.
Just glad you didn’t have anything of yours at the store when they went on the lam.
Going on the lam didn’t lead to bankruptcy; they went bankrupt because the Handas overspent to expand their business, and couldn’t make up for it in sales. They mortaged their house several times over to pay for everything, and owed every publication in town money for ads by mid-June 2007. It’s a very straightforward and sad story. No threats, just an overabundance of optimism and some really poor forecasting.
Thanks, Anne. Too bad Handas screwed up so badly. It’s a cautionary tale about planning and what can happen if you don’t take into account the worst scenarios.
I’ll miss the place. Yet another thing that has gone since I lived in Cambridge (along with Wordsworth books in Harvard Square and Goeman Noodles at One Kendall Square — actually, there were at least 2 restaurants after Goeman in that particular space, and who knows how many there have been since)