The Renewal Workshop, an Oregon company known for repairing discarded apparel and reselling at discount rates, has closed its Cascade Locks factory after its acquisition by a European supply chain management company.
The Cascades Locks startup, which employed more than 40 workers at its peak, was bought last month by Bleckmann, a large fashion logistics company based in the Netherlands. The purchase price and terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Before the acquisition, the Columbia Gorge startup received daily shipments of defective clothing products from big fashion brands. Those items would be inspected, cleaned and repaired to be made available again for resale at a discount on “recommerce” websites.
Nicole Bassett, who co-founded the Oregon business in 2015 with Jeff Denby, said that work would now be done elsewhere.
“Services that were once provided in Cascade Locks are now being set up in Ohio, as well as in other locations that Bleckmann owns in Europe and the U.K.,” Bassett said.
Bassett, who will stay involved in the company, previously told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she and Denby built the Cascade Locks facility in 2016 after they needed to expand from a smaller warehouse space. Then, in 2019, they opened a second factory in Amsterdam.
The Dutch company already had a U.S.-based facility, Bassett said, and decided to close the one in Cascade Locks.
“The upside of the acquisition is that we are able to more quickly scale the services of renewal and offer it to more brands so that they can preserve more of their products that were damaged in resale,” Bassett said.
–Kristine de Leon, [email protected], @deleonkrist
