'We didn't want any of our brides to suffer': Bridal stores band together after dress designer goes bankrupt

When the American wedding dress designer Alfred Angelo declared bankruptcy last month, a Calgary store was among the many left scrambling to make sure brides were dressed to impress on their big day.

Jessalyn Thomson, owner of Calgary-basedbridal store Cameo and Cufflinks, told the Calgary Eyeopener howAlfred Angelo Bridal going out of business brought brides and retailers togetherto make the best out of a bad situation.

An excerpt of that interview follows:

Q: Can you walk us through what happened?

A:In July, we got an e-mail from our repjust sayingthat the bankruptcy had happened. This was July13.

So we were kind of told over the course of two weeks that the dresseswere going to be getting shipped to us. There were going to be some orders that we wouldn't get, but the majority would come.

And then the message drastically changed on July 25.The new bankruptcy trustee that they got andlawyer decided that nothing was going to end upgetting shipped to Canada.

Q: How popular arethese Alfred Angelowedding dresses?

A: Even though theyare such a major supplier, we are very fortunate. We diversify our brands sothey were not a major contributor of ours.

But we did have about eight bridal gowns outstanding, plus the equivalent in bridesmaids'dresses. So although we were affected, we definitely weren't affected as much as some other stores out there.

Q: How expensive are these Alfred Angelo dresses?

A:Alfred Angelo gowns typically range from about $700 to $2,000, so they definitely do hit the market of the brides that are, I would say, a bit more price conscious.

So the fact that you're hearing these stories from the U.S. of girls just losing their money, losing their property of what they spent their money on, is definitely devastating and caused a widespread panic.

Q:What are you doing to help out the brides?

A: In Canada we have our own inventory.We're self-contained stores and not Alfred Angelo stores, so wewere working with stores from B.C. all the way to Nova Scotia.

All the bridal stores kind of had this common goal we're all just going to sell our inventory to each other at cost because in the end we didn'twant any of our brides to suffer.

So because of that, we were able to get about half of our customers orders fulfilled just from essentially trading inventory with different stores across Canada.

Q: Are you taking a financial hit?

A:Oh, yes.Definitelythepeople we did refunds to impacts the bottom line.

Aseamstresscan tailor down [a dress by as much as four sizes] so in order to have the girlsacceptthat, we're taking on the costs of the alterations.

If it's a gown that had beenpreviouslytried on even offering 30 per cent off the gown,too.

We've had some girls who we weren'table to find replacement dresses for, so we've had to do refunds.

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• With files from the Calgary Eyeopener