Kitchen House shuts up shop

Photo / supplied

A kitchen manufacturer and retailer owned by failed furniture maker Criterion Group is understood to have closed its stores and sent its staff home.

Kitchen House has six retail outlets around the North Island, three of them in Auckland, and is understood to have a manufacturing facility in Mt Wellington.

The company went into receivership in February 2009 and was bought by Auckland-based Criterion for an undisclosed sum in April of the same year.

Criterion went into receivership earlier this month, reportedly owing $11 million to creditors.

A Kitchen House customer who contacted the Herald said he had been called by a staff member from its Albany shop last night and informed that all of the firm's stores had been closed and its employees sent home.

"I had a kitchen on order to be delivered next week," said the customer, who did not want to be named. "They basically phoned up yesterday to say it ain't coming."

He said he had paid a 10 per cent deposit on a $10,000 kitchen.

The Kitchen House employee told him that six or seven other customers were also receiving the news yesterday that their kitchens would not be delivered, the customer said.

At the time of its 2009 receivership, Kitchen House had around 62 full and part time staff.

Criterion chief executive Brian Smaill has not returned calls this morning.