SSG, Phoenix help NY curtain giant's $25M Wells Fargo loan

Two suburban Philadelphia firms have teamed up to arrange refinancing for Budd Goldman's Ellery Homestyles LLC, a 75-year-old Manhattan curtain design and supply firm that counts Target and other big store chains as clients.

Ellery won a rush of orders last year for its new lines of "energy-saving" curtains, but had a tough time raising capital to pay for them from traditional lenders in Manhattan's Seventh Ave. garment district, according to Michael Goodman, managing director at SSG Capital Advisors LLC, West Conshohocken.

Goodman and managing director Robert C. Smith contacted lenders, arranged a $25 million asset-based senior line of credit from Wells Fargo Bank and restructured Ellery's mezzanine debt.

Wells Fargo "certainly has unique expertise in the textile industry, and they are one of the few healthy banks that are out there aggressively lending," Goodman told me. It helped, a lot, that Ellery sales rose during the reorganization thanks to the new curtain lines.

Michael Jacoby of workout loan specialists and investment advisers Phoenix Capital Management, Chadds Ford, "helped manage (Ellery's) cash flow and execute their strategic cost reductions," Goodman said. Updated: That included "managing cash so we could keep the banks happy," as well as "streamlining" the business, loan negotiations and due diligence. Ellery's use of two Philadelphia advisory firms was coincidental, he added.