AHF Products, Gordon Brothers enter Armstrong Flooring bankruptcy proceedings: Here’s what we know [Analysis] | Local Business

Understanding the two new providers that have entered Armstrong Flooring Inc. individual bankruptcy proceedings may perhaps shed some mild on the place the iconic Lancaster business is headed.

The corporations, AHF Merchandise and Gordon Brothers, are not lenders, that means they are not owed money, and they surfaced this week in comparatively regime filings. 

Just one has Armstrong Flooring roots – West Hempfield Township-dependent flooring producer AHF applied to be a portion of Armstrong Flooring. In addition, AHF’s CEO made use of to perform for Armstrong Flooring’s former mother or father business, Armstrong World Industries. Privately held AHF also competes in the exact market place as Armstrong Flooring. 

The prospect that AHF is part of a offer to purchase section of Armstrong Flooring’s North American property rests on additional than its physical appearance in court proceedings as Armstrong Flooring prepares to ask a decide to approve a deal. On Thursday, AHF declared a obligatory, all-palms conference for that afternoon as Armstrong Flooring was scheduled to existing a offer to the choose. At about the exact time that Armstrong Flooring backed off presenting the deal in court, AHF cancelled the assembly. 

AHF did not reply to inquiries from LNP | LancasterOnline asking if it expects to be section of a offer to purchase all or section of Armstrong Flooring. 

The second identify is Boston-dependent Gordon Brothers, an intercontinental broker of consolidations, funding and liquidations. 

Supplied that Armstrong Flooring announced Friday that it is doing the job to finalize a offer that would preserve a “substantial portion” of its North American functions, it could be Gordon Brothers’ purpose to liquidate the remaining sections of the business. 

Lawyers for AHF and Gordon Brothers submitted requests this week to be admitted into Delaware bankruptcy court docket, a program formality in courtroom proceedings. The decide managing the situation has nonetheless to approve. 

Here is more of what we know about AHF and Gordon Brothers: 

A look at AHF Solutions 

Armstrong Flooring sold its wood flooring business enterprise, AHF Solutions, to private fairness agency American Industrial Associates for $100 million in 2018. Considering that then, AHF has grown to incorporate vinyl, plank, laminate and professional merchandise. 

Dallas-centered Paceline, a further private equity company, obtained AHF in February for an undisclosed cost. 

In January 2021, AHF diversified additional deeply into luxurious vinyl tile producing when it ordered Parterre Flooring Programs for an undisclosed rate. The go put AHF squarely in competitors with its former owner, Armstrong Flooring. The acquisition was AHF’s third immediately after it agreed to acquire a hardwood flooring plant from Tennessee-centered American OEM in August 2021, and its invest in of Texas-centered LM Flooring in 2019. 

AHF employs far more than 2,300 people with documented revenues of additional than $400 million. Union membership is not very clear companywide, but the Teamsters represent about 400 workers, who manufacture hardwood flooring, under various names, like Bruce Hardwood in Beverly, West Virginia.   

AHF operates 8 producing services, seven in the United States and one in Cambodia, and three domestic distribution services. It has amenities in Titusville, Pennsylvania (Crawford County) Warren, Arkansas Oneida, Tennessee West Plains, Missouri Somerset, Kentucky Plano, Texas and Beverly, West Virginia. The Beverly plant formerly belonged to Armstrong Flooring. 

AHF is led by previous Armstrong Globe Industries executive Brian Carson, who begun with AWI in 1990 out of college. He expended 16 decades in operational leadership roles at Armstrong Earth Industries, which includes as senior vice president of North American resilient and hardwood flooring. 

Carson still left in 2006 to be a part of Mohawk Flooring, an Atlanta-based mostly maker of carpet, wooden, vinyl, tile, and rugs. He returned to Lancaster County in 2019.  

Armstrong Environment Industries entered the wood flooring and cabinet company by acquiring Dallas-dependent Triangle Pacific in 1998 for $1.15 billion. It marketed the cupboards company to American Industrial Partners in 2012 for $27 million. 

Armstrong Flooring was spun off from Armstrong Earth Industries in April 2016 as an impartial, publicly held firm. 

A glimpse at Gordon Brothers 

Founded in 1903, Gordon Brothers has 30 workplaces across five continents and suggests it conducts much more than $70 billion truly worth of dispositions and appraisals annually. It has developed that worldwide company by helping distressed businesses take care of a wide variety of strategic or economic complications, or what it phone calls “times of transformation.” 

Gordon Brothers presents tips throughout all professional and industrial sectors but has turn into specifically know for aiding retail business enterprise going by way of bankruptcy, which can involve creating limited-expression financial loans or overseeing the liquidation of outlets and other assets. 

Gordon Brothers has assisted with store closing gross sales for Toys R Us, KB Toys, Hollywood Movie, Radio Shack, Business Depot, Circuit Town, Sears and Athletics Authority, amongst numerous some others. 

The enterprise has performed a top part in some of those people keep closings, like for Athletics Authority in which it offered stock, furnishings, fixtures and devices at all its 450 U.S. destinations after Sports activities Authority submitted for individual bankruptcy in 2016. In other instances, Gordon Brothers has had a smaller part, this kind of as for Sears the place it only oversaw closing profits of Sears stores in Canada. 

Domestically, Gordon Brothers served Ephrata Borough-centered Doneckers liquidate property in 2008 when it closed the restaurant, visitor rooms, and house décor and home furniture shops that experienced been an establishment considering the fact that the 1960s. 

In some scenarios, Gordon Brothers has preserved a company’s model adhering to a sale of its hard property. Linens ‘n Factors was revived as an on the internet-only model right after Gordon Brothers helped liquidate the chain’s 500-in addition retail retailers in 2008. And Gordon Brothers helped Sharper Image re-arise as a licensing composition just after the catalog vendor of futuristic devices, electronics and therapeutic massage chairs offered all of its very own challenging assets in 2008.