Regal Gifts Corp. representatives want answers – and their money – after the direct marketing company known for its giftwrap and kitschy gadgets mysteriously closed a day before an all-important Christmas sales season deadline.

Sales reps for the Barrie, Ont.-based catalogue business say they have not had any communication from the company about its sudden shut down in late August.

Some say they had hundreds or thousands of dollars in their Regal accounts from commissions and returns that they want refunded. Many of the independent sales reps had also just pre-ordered the Christmas catalogue, at a cost of $6 for 10.

“Christmas is the busiest time of year, when most of us make most of our money,” said Megan Gilkes, a rep in Kitchener.

“Some people have hundreds of regular customers that are now calling with their Christmas orders and they have nothing to say because we don’t know what the answer is.”

One former employee who wished to remain anonymous said that business was halted on Aug. 24, when all staff — about 40 people — were laid off within hours of arriving for work. Employees, he said, were instructed not to communicate with the Regal reps.

The company stopped taking catalogue orders on the 23rd because there was a printer problem, the source said employees were told.

Regal Gifts’ listed directors, Larry Cole, Bruce Kesse and William Taggart Sr. could not be reached by the Toronto Star despite numerous attempts. The company’s law firm said it could not comment on its client’s behalf.

The direct marketing pioneer known for catalogues full of wrapping paper, toothpaste squeezers, ball hat cleaners and other tchotchkes was established in 1928. Since then, it has gone through several owners and a bankruptcy in 2005.

Regal is owned by York Management Services, a New Jersey-based private equity firm headed by William Taggart Sr. that specializes in acquiring underperforming businesses. It also owns the Canadian retail chain Northern Reflections.

The York Management website lists Regal as a current company in its portfolio and Taggart as majority shareholder and chairman of Regal’s board. It says Taggart is also majority shareholder and chairman of the board at Northern Group, which operates 250 Northern Reflections stores in Canada and the U.S. and a distribution centre serving Foot Locker’s Canadian locations.

A direct-marketing company, Regal uses independent agents across the country to sell its kitschy wares — from the cookie scoop (“Just a quick scoop gives you the perfect amount of batter for cookies, meatballs or mini muffins!”) to the sauna suit (“Helps to make aerobic workout more effective”).

The reps ordered the catalogues and distribute them to friends and family. They earned a commission ranging from 15 per cent to 45 per cent depending on how many orders they placed. Regal was also a popular fundraising tool, with schools or other organizations receiving the commission from the sales.

Many of the reps found out about the closure when they couldn’t access any of the company’s websites, including their own, where each rep keeps key information, including financial and tax filing data, customer phone numbers and their account balances.

Judith Bower, a 10-year-long Regal rep in Etobicoke, said orders for three of her customers are in limbo and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever receive the items.

“They’re not going to deliver it until Regal pays for it, so I’m assuming that it will never come, but we have no idea,” she said.

The company had about 20,000 to 30,000 sales representatives and mailed out about half a million catalogues a year, said a source familiar with the company. Regal was struggling to integrate the decades-old catalogue sales method with the emerging e-commerce market, he added.

On a recent visit to the company’s headquarters at 360 Saunders Rd. in Barrie there were no cars or delivery trucks in the parking lot. The property was listed for sale on the Realtor.ca site as of early September but the listing has since been taken down.

The doors were locked. Inside the darkened call centre, the remnants of the catalogue company’s office life remain – catalogues and novelty items strewn about, a “6 reasons I love being a Grandma” mug sitting on an abandoned desk.

A records search shows the company has several liens against it, mostly for equipment. Regal has not filed for bankruptcy, but even if it did the reps are unlikely to recover their money through that process because they are not technically employees.

Wendy Franko, a Regal rep since 1984, figures she is owed $3,400. She spent $1,500 on pre-ordering the catalogues and was waiting on a $1,900 cheque from the company.

“I basically volunteered my time for Regal to sell their product because they needed it sold because they were in such dire straits, apparently,” said Franko, the top-selling individual representative. She sold $130,000 of merchandise and catalogues last year, earning the highest possible commission of 45 per cent.

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She said the company was very tight-lipped about its financial situation but the reps were suspicious as out-of-stock items increasingly became the norm over the past six months.

“Everybody thought we were going to go through Christmas and if we didn’t get out of the bind by Christmas then they would probably be closing in January,” she said.

Many of the reps say they are most angry about the company’s lack of candour.

A day before the closure, many reps reported they could no longer order the Christmas catalogue. Some say they called the customer service line and were told there was an issue with the printer.

“This was one of many red flags that have been happening since the spring. They came out with an unusual catalogue. It was primarily clearance items,” said sales rep Meadow Skeet.

“Their story was that they were trying to clear out the warehouse. It frustrated a lot of reps because these items were of limited quantity so it was difficult to fulfill orders for customers.”

The company had also just revamped the Regal website in July. Seasonal employee Joanne Moffatt said she was hired in the Barrie call centre after the launch to listen to and erase some 700 voicemails from reps frustrated with glitches in the new website and the lack of inventory.

“All I could hear all day is ‘it’s no longer available’,” she said of her time in the call centre.

Two days into her short-lived job, she realized the company had serious problems. Some of the voicemails were from angry creditors, she said.

Moffatt had expected to work through the Christmas rush into January as she had done in prior years.

But just eight days after she started, she received an email from her manager saying she was no longer needed.

Nearly a month after the closure, reps are still in the dark. Some are scrambling to sell the inventory they have on hand.

“I just can’t figure out how companies can do this to people,” said Susan Zaroski, a Regal representative for 35 years. It was a job that allowed her to stay home with her three children, who helped out by delivering catalogues to her 1,400 customers.

She had ordered and paid for 1,458 Christmas catalogues, totaling more than $1,000. She also has about $30,000 worth of merchandise in storage that she plans to sell at bazaars and open houses this holiday season anyway.

She plans to tempt customers to her sale with tea and homemade fudge the same way she always has despite the bitter taste Regal has left in her own mouth.

“It’s just indecent. Decent human beings just say ‘Hey I’m sorry, but we’re closing.”