WARREN, MI – Many customers will lose out as Art Van Furniture starts its going out of business sales this week.

All company-owned stores will close after liquidation, which is set to begin on Friday, March 6. Stores are expected to close in the next 60 days.

Liquidation plans were announced Thursday morning for all company-owned Art Van Furniture, Art Van PureSleep, and Scott Shuptrine Interiors in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri, a company news release said. Eight Wolf Furniture stores in Maryland and Virginia will also be liquidated.

Anyone with Art Van products sitting in their home and a warranty in the drawer will find that the piece of paper won’t be worth much once the company backing it is out of business, Charlie Langton told FOX 2 Detroit.

Customers who have a balance on their Art Van credit card are still responsible for paying the bill, Langton said. As the company goes out of business, those payments will eventually be redirected to a court or trustee.

Some customers might not ever see furniture they ordered. A Lansing area couple expected their Art Van furniture to be delivered this week, they said in an email to MLive. When they heard the company is going out of business, they assumed the lifetime warranty they paid for would be a loss, but still hoped to receive their furniture. They reached customer service Thursday afternoon and were informed that the order was canceled.

“Sure hope they cancel the lifetime warranty and the delivery charge, too,” they said.

There are 97 locations in Michigan. Twenty of the total 190 stores are franchise locations, situated in the Upper Peninsula, Alpena, Mount Pleasant and Owosso in Michigan and in Indiana, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The Warren-based furniture retailer was founded by Art Van Elslander in Detroit in 1959. In 2017, the company was sold to Boston-based Thomas H. Lee Partners. Elslander died in 2018. Rumors began to circulate in February that owner Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, a private equity firm, was looking to sell or file for bankruptcy.

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