Hello Everyone,
I must say that I am thankful to ALL of you for posting in regards to MBTT. Whether you are or are not a fan, your attention to the matter is touching. I apologize for taking so long to post, but as you can imagine life has been a little chaotic since MBTT closed.
I worked for MBTT managing the retail store in 2002 and 2003, went home to be a stay at home mom for about 4 years and I came back Nov. 07 to try and turn some things around. In fact we did! The retail store was doing well, trailers were moving and the business was looking up. We were also getting caught up on bills to vendors.
I apologize to anyone that may have experienced a negative customer service situation, I hope that it was not while I was there because I must say I thought at the end we had some AMAZING, DEDICATED, LOYAL employees.
Sure mistakes were made by the Howells, along with other managers within Millbrook, but I think we all need to remember that we are all human and did the best we could at the time.
Laura Howell is a personal friend of mine and I know that closing this business has brought her hours and hours of frustration, hurt, and compassion for the loss of the employees. I also know for a fact that Dan Howell feels horrible for the loss. Certainly not for himself, but for his employees.
The "kids" were not running Millbrook and never did. Laura was the only Howell child that was an employee of Millbrook and she did an amazing job in her position. She is an extremely intelligent woman with amazing integrity.
We had been working with the banks for a few weeks to try to get them to look at a go forward plan. That was part of the reason for closing Big Moose RV up north. We were honest with our employees always that we were trying to do whatever we could to save the company. Right until the end we truly believed that we would be able to save it.
I must say, not that I blame everything on 5/3 bank, but their unwillingness to negotiate at all, when in FACT they DID pull a line of credit on us and gave us a 2 day notice was truly frustrating. I will never do business with them again. The fact of the matter is that 5/3 bank is doing everything they can to get out of commercial lending and they don't care what they have to do to accomplish that task. Including shutting down viable businesses.(Certainly not what our Michigan economy needs).
Just an FYI, Millbrook was not hosting the Roof Sit this year anyways, so we did not hurt B93 in any way.
I think at the end of the day, what really matters is having compassion for those that lost their jobs and not spending so much time on spreading hate and venom towards "who dun it". Hindsight is always 20/20.
I for one will miss Millbrook, not only as an employee but as a member of the Michigan economy because they employeed (with the north store) just under 50 employees. Every two weeks we religiously received our paychecks, without fault, and YES our last paychecks were also honored.
I want to thank the employees of Millbrook who saw to the end that the customers were taken care of as much as we possibly could with a 2 day notice. We called every single consignment customer and layaway customer we could to get them their product back. I even hand delivered a few myself. At the very end, none of us thought of ourselves, we thought of our customers first! I think that says a lot about our employees integrity. A special thanks to Joan, Renee, Sean, Jim K., Jim V., Brandi, and if I missed any my apologies for helping us out those last days. YOU ARE THE BEST.. and I wish all the Millbrook employees the best of luck in finding new positions. Any company would be lucky to have you!!!
Sincerely,
Jamie "Crickett" Kelly
Millbrook's Store Manager