Strouds Buys Industry Building;
Still Eyeing Sites in OC for Stores
By JENNIFER BELLANTONIO
Bed and bath retailer Strouds has landed new digs.
Strouds Building LLC, an arm of Strouds Acquisition Corp., paid $9 million for a 159,000-square-foot building at Plantation Business Park in the city of Industry where it plans to consolidate operations.
The buy comes after the company had looked at several locations in Orange and Los Angeles counties, according to Walter Cruttenden, Strouds’ chairman and majority shareholder.
“It was a little bit more attractively priced in L.A. County than it was in Orange County,” Cruttenden said. “We looked at a comparable building in OC,almost identical in size,and the cost was about 10% to 15% higher.”
Plus Strouds, which now has offices, distribution and Internet fulfillment in nearly 200,000 square feet of space in Industry, wanted to make things easy for its workers, Cruttenden said.
“The main deciding factor was we wanted to keep the headquarters as close and convenient to where our employees live as possible,” he said.
Strouds expects to move into the new building by June 30. The company is expanding the property to house its corporate offices. The building is set to have about 190,000 square feet when renovations are done, Cruttenden said.
The move marks a new era for Strouds, which was bought out of bankruptcy last spring for $39.5 million. Cruttenden led the buyout group of new owners making up Strouds Acquistion. He’s also head of Cruttenden Partners LLC, a private investment firm in Newport Beach, and started what now is Newport Beach-based Roth Capital Partners LLC.
Strouds, which operates 50 stores mostly in California, emerged from bankruptcy in May and now is profitable, according to Cruttenden. Annual sales are pegged at $160 million to $170 million, down from $230 million when Strouds operated 70 stores.
The company has seen lots of changes, including refocusing on bed and bath products, overhauling its stores and getting a new management team.
Several longtime workers who invested in the company were promoted to executive status, such as Robert Valone, former merchandise manager, who now is president, and Gary Van Wagner, chief financial officer who also now is chief operating officer.
Strouds continues to scout undisclosed locations for stores, including in OC, Cruttenden said.
“We’re looking at a few sites,” he said. “We think we can add maybe a dozen more stores through California eventually. We’ve got a couple of specific areas we really want to fill in.”
