FAIRFIELD COUNTY
BUSINESS JOURNAL May 23, 2016 | VOL. 52, No. 21
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Shelton’s BrandShop sees bright future in online retail BY REECE ALVAREZ ralvarez@westfairinc.com
I
t is easy to frame the competition between brick and mortar and online retailers as a classic “in with the new, out with the old” framework, but CEO Reuben Hendell of BrandShop LLC in Shelton thinks his company is in the early stages of a tug-of-war that may never be fully won. His company provides inhouse, end-to-end services from designing and creating online storefronts to handling payments, shipping, warehousing, customer service and more for brands who want to sell their products through their own dedicated online marketplace. “This game is relatively young
Reuben Hendell, CEO of BrandShop, LLC in Shelton. Photo by Reece Alvarez
versus online retailing in general,” he said. “People have been going to markets since the Dutch created markets. I don’t think that’s going anywhere.” Online retail is certainly growing. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates total e-commerce sales in 2015 at $341.7 billion, an increase of 14.6 percent from 2014. E-commerce sales last year accounted for 7.3 percent of total sales compared with 6.4 percent of total sales in 2014. And brick-and-mortar-based retailers are struggling, with companies from Kohl’s and Macy’s to Barnes & Noble and RadioShack reporting financial headwinds, repositioning themselves and » BRANDS, page 6
Fight over ivory to continue in Connecticut BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
S
ee you again next year. That’s the takeaway from the failure of an antiivory bill to pass during the latest state legislative session. Connecticut antiques dealers are happy and animal rights activists are disappointed. And while there is talk of working together to shift focus from the owning and selling of ivory already in the state — and toward further supporting efforts against the ongoing poaching of elephants and rhinos in Africa and Asia — such a move seems unlikely in the short run. The legislation, HB5578, which
sought to prohibit the sale and trade of ivory and rhinoceros horn in the state, was not called for a vote in the legislature as it focused instead on passing the budget. Whether the bill — similar to one that was tabled during the 2015 session — would have passed had lawmakers not run out of time remains debatable. “We are very disappointed — but we will be back,” declared Annie Hornish, a former state representative who is now the Connecticut director of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which led the lobbying effort to get the bill passed. “This issue is not going away.” “The Humane Society got very
personal with its efforts to get the bill passed,” said Rep. Mitch Bolinsky, R-Newtown, who added that his work against the bill was driven largely by antiques dealer constituents. Bolinsky said that he discussed the bill at length with Rep. James Albis, D-East Haven, assistant majority leader and chairman of the Environment Committee, about the matter. “He understands what I did in defense of the people of Connecticut,” Bolinsky said. At issue was the bill’s provision to penalize anyone selling ivory in the state; an original proviso making mere possession of ivory illegal was removed. While
an amendment was introduced to allow the selling of ivory and items containing less than 20 percent of ivory through July 2017, dealers still found the bill’s contents excessively punitive — even nonsensical. “They were offering to exclude musical instruments (such as pianos with ivory keys), do this and that, but they couldn’t demonstrate how it was a real problem in Connecticut,” said Jack DeStories, who with his wife, Rosie, runs Fairfield Auctions in Monroe, which maintains it is the state’s largest antiques and fine art auctioneer. “And if your mother has a 50-year-old piano, she could be susceptible to a $3,000 fine and
potential jail time. That’s how ridiculous they got.” Joining the HSUS in supporting the measure were such animal rights organizations as Born Free USA and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, as well as the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport. Arguments such as DeStories’ “are what we encounter anytime this comes up,” said Born Free USA CEO Adam M. Roberts, whose organization estimates that 101 elephants were slaughtered for their ivory per day from 2012 to 2015. “The point is that once that (July ’17) grace period finishes, that’s the end of the ivory trade.” » IVORY, page 6