Retail stores prompt financial offerings by Ramblers Way
Photo / Courtesy of Ramblers Way Farm
Ramblers Way Farm CEO Tom Chappell with a Rambouillet ram whose wool is used to make the company's clothing.
A series of fund raises totaling $10 million by sustainable clothing company Ramblers Way Farm, which was founded by Tom’s of Maine founders Tom and Kate Chappell in 2009, will be used for working capital and to open retail stores, primarily in New England, over the next five years.
The company brought in $150,000 of a $1 million debt and convertible note offering, according to a July 12 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. In an amended SEC filing on March 2, it sold $6,076,714 of a $10 million equity offering with the first date of sale on Dec. 31, 2013.
Tom Chappell told Mainebiz that more specifically, the total amount the company aims to raise is $10 million in a combination of $4.5 million in equity already raised in 2013, plus an ongoing $5 million equity raise that started late last year and the most recent debt and convertible note offering. The latter two offerings are still open. The $150,000 came from a private businessman, Chappell confirmed.
Still in the family
Chappell, who had kept his companies in the family until selling 84% of Tom’s of Maine to Colgate Palmolive Co. for $100 million in 2006, said he plans to keep a majority of Ramblers Way in the family.
“The plan is for the Chappells to continue to own three-quarters of the business,” he said. When Mainebiz interviewed Chappell at the end of 2014, he said Ramblers Way was a $1 million company at that time.
The company plans to refocus from selling through high-end retail stores into having its own Ramblers Way stores and web sales.
Chappell said it will open a store in Portland’s Old Port and two locations reported to be in New Hampshire, in Portsmouth and Hanover, over the next six months. He has signed a lease for one of the New Hampshire stores, but would not divulge which one. Plans call for two or three retail stores to open each year, in northern New England through 2017 and 2018 and then other locations.
Tough finding space in Old Port
The Portland location resulted in a near miss: he had a letter of intent for a 2,000-square-foot Old Port location, but the owner gave it to a higher bidder.
“We spent a lot of time and money on that,” Chappell said. He said his broker at Malone Real Estate still is looking for an Old Port location, and has been for the past year-and-a-half.
The company now has 15 employees, and expects to have three full-time equivalents per new store. Each store will have a seamstress and cutting capability to customize clothing if all goes well, he said.
Still, the retail clothing industry, along with the company’s goal of fully producing its products in the United States, present challenges.
“We’ve been challenged far more than we thought by the complexity of the textile and garment industries, our own inexperience and the lack of capacity in this country,” he said. “We are pretty much the only textile operation that has resurfaced in this country.”
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Three Ramblers Way Farm locations planned by year's end
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