Century-Old Family Business Files for Chapter 7 Liquidation

Studio City, William A. Peet & Sons, Inc., for one of the oldest companies in the Valley, has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the current owner is believed to be in the process of closing the family business started by his grandfather more a century ago.

Lindsay Peet, 48, who took over the company in late 1970, had considered selling the company earlier this year after seeing its sales fall by about 40 percent since the 1990s. Peet said he hoped that deeper cuts would offset the decline: it reduces the 15 full-time positions over the past two years and has operations in his home for discussions with potential buyers .

Peet has refused to discuss the details behind the July 7 liquidation filing Chapter 21, which, according to public records, shows the company is carrying a burden of debt $ 317,000.

When asked to explain the deposit, Peet say only that “it was an option more cautious,” deferred comment until a bankruptcy procedure scheduled for shortly after Labor Day.

However, industry representatives say more competition over the last decade, the share of non-unionized workers, coupled with escalating costs of workers’ compensation, presented extreme challenges.

“In fact, right now our members are doing well because summer is a busy time,” said Chris Sandquist, head of office for the Burbank Chapter of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 761. “But in recent years, times were hard. There was no work. And many of our members have lost their jobs to non-union companies because their fees are lower and they do not to pay such high costs for insurance. ”

The 103-year Peet company was founded in 1900, when grandfather William Lindsay Peet settle in Koreatown. William Peet then passed the business to his son, Harold, who moved to the valley in 1939.

son, Harold, Peet’s, Gaynor has become the latest company and his son Lindsay and Dennis joined in the 1970s.

But weak sales, combined with disagreements among the three on the management style of their father and the future of the company, prompted Lindsay to get her father and brother in the late 1980s.

Lindsay said the company newspaper in April that he had compared the sale of the family business to “cut a limb,” and said he had great concern for the lung-time employees and regret not be able to preserve the family legacy.

But Peet has also stressed he had no heirs in line to buy the company, its readiness to move in another direction.

The fact that Peet & Son has survived four generations of the property is remarkable, even for an industry beset by rising insurance costs and increasing competition. Statistics show that 95 percent of all family businesses in the United States have never been beyond the third generation.