I was a supplier of blinds to American Blind and Wallpaper Factory. They owe me a lot of $$$$ for orders that were shipped to their customers and then I didn't get paid. There have been several postings about this. I have done some research and this is what I have found. The guy that owned American Blinds is Jon Bauer who heads up a multi-billion dollar hedge fund called contrarian capital. He was also American Blinds "secure lender". I am told that over the years his company took out millions and millions of dollars out of American Blinds. He bled them dry and then decided to pull the plug on the operation and stiffing American Blinds vendors for millions of millions of dollars. Without any notice he partners Jay Steinfeld, who owns Blinds.com which is one of American's largest competitors. Jay buys the "assets" of American Blinds leaving the company with all this unpaid debt. Jay Stienfeld, the President of Blinds.com posts the following post on a window covering blog. Of course he doesn't idnetify that he is the president of Blinds.com. Jay, maybe you can tell all of us vendors what happened to all the money american blinds made. where did all the money go? Customers paid for orders upfront, we shipped orders and then American didn't pay us the money. How can that be? How do you and John Bauer think that you can just do this backroom deal in the middle of the night, close up shop and walk away from millions of dollars of $$$ owed to American Blinds creditors. Do either you or John bauer have a consious about all of the jobs that have been lost at American Blinds? How about all the families of the employees that lost their jobs at American? You both should be ashamed of yourselfs.

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:57:39 -0500
"Jay Steinfeld" <[email protected]>

American Blinds-response from the purchaser of its assets
I'm the CEO of Global Custom Commerce, the company that bought the
assets of American Blinds from their lender. For those of you who don't
know me, I've been in the window coverings business almost 25 years. I
started with one window coverings store that I owned along with my wife,
Naomi. She and I went online, 17 years ago, way back in 1993.

Hopefully, this post will shed some light on what's recently happened.
As has already been publically disclosed, AmericanBlinds for whatever
reasons was not doing well, to the point where their largest creditor
foreclosed. That creditor lost many millions of dollars, despite the
foreclosure.

It's true that when American was foreclosed upon, several suppliers were
stuck with unpaid bills by the former owners. Apparently the one
"secured" lender lost even more money on the deal than suppliers were
owed. But it's all relative - $7, 000 for one company might be relatively
the same as $7 million for another. It's still real money, a terrible
situation, and a bitter pill to swallow.

What's also true, however, is that after we purchased the old
AmericanBlinds' assets from the lender, we paid hundreds of thousands of
dollars to vendors, to make sure that every customer got their product
for which they had paid. Specifically, all the manufacturers were paid
for every open order they were ready to ship, but were holding due to
credit-hold.

If the person who originally posted [anonymously] would contact me, I'll
make sure that his or her firm also gets reimbursed for all open orders.

So it's true that suppliers lost money when the old owners ceased doing
business. But now my company is running the website, taking orders, and
paying suppliers promptly - just as we've always done. Hopefully we will
do a better job with the company than the former owners.


Jay Steinfeld, CEO
Global Custom Commerce, LP