Wren Kitchens told employees Thursday afternoon that it was closing its US stores and showrooms immediately, and by 4 p.m. the doors at the Newington showroom were locked. More than three dozen workers lost their jobs in the shutdown, former employees said, after a Zoom call around 3 p.m. made clear the company was pulling out without warning.
The abrupt shutdown left customers like Melissa Dethlefsen scrambling to figure out what comes next. She said she had ordered $23,000 worth of cabinets and countertops from Wren Kitchens, with delivery expected the upcoming Wednesday, before her contractor called late Thursday night to say the company had shut down. “As a family of five, it’s been hard to live in one room essentially. S to be so close and then to have it ripped away, is it’s like devastating,” she said.
Wren Kitchens is based in the UK, but the closure landed in Connecticut with little warning and no clear explanation for the people who depended on it. Dethlefsen said she spoke Friday morning with someone at the UK offices, who told her to be ready for calls from the United States and not to speak to the press, but also said they should just take down information. “He said that they had been told to be prepared for phone calls from the United States, not to speak to anybody from the press and to just take our information. And he was like; I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.
For employees, the lack of notice deepened the damage. Anes Hodzic, who managed the Newington showroom, said no one was given pink slips before the computers went black. “No one got any pink slips. No one got anything. Once they walked out of the offices, all the computers went black, black screens,” he said. Hodzic said he got his last paycheck Friday and learned the same day that he no longer had insurance. “We got nothing regarding customers, regarding some sort of severance for the employees, nothing really,” he said.
Customers and former workers now face the same question: whether anyone will recover the money, the goods or the coverage they were promised. Wren Kitchens' website told customers to fill out a form, and the company had not responded to calls or emails from WFSB. “I wanted to talk to you guys because I feel like the media and the public will put a little pressure on them to make sure these people get their money back,” Hodzic said. Dethlefsen was more direct about what the shutdown should mean for the company that left her waiting on a kitchen. “Not that I want to be spiteful, but like somebody has to be held accountable for this,” she said.
