Providence ad agency files for receivership, cites stagnant economy
Providence-based advertising agency Chaffee & Partners has closed its doors and filed for receivership, citing the effects of a sluggish local and national economy.
“I think it’s the economy in general and the fact that until the war is settled, the economy is going to be stagnant,” said David S. Chaffee, president and CEO of Chaffee & Partners.
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He said he hopes the 21-year-old company, which stopped doing business at the end of February, will emerge from receivership within four to six months. Until then, Chaffee said a majority of his clients said they would remain with the agency.
“Our main concern is that their business is not interrupted,” Chaffee said. “Our clients are all being serviced and projects are continuing. We’re taking care of them.”
Chaffee & Partners, whose gross income in 2002 was $1.2 million, also felt the effects of losing its largest client, Bank of Newport as of March 1. The bank had been a client for four years, he said, and losing the account hit the agency hard. Chaffee said that the agency currently has six to eight clients. The agency’s total billings, at their highest, were approximately $18 million, he said, adding that it was during the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Chaffee said another reason the company has filed for receivership status is that one of the company’s former clients owes the ad agency $100,000.
“It’s been in litigation for a few years,” he said.
Some of the agency’s current clients include North Safety Products and Partridge Snow & Hahn. In 2002, according to the PBN Book of Lists, the agency had 25 clients, with eight new clients in 2002.
Chaffee said his former vice president Bruce Amand started his own business and took with him two or three clients, including Dome Industries.
When a new and somewhat streamlined Chaffee & Partners re-opens, Chaffee said he would have a smaller and more efficient agency, with some of the former staff and a smaller client base.
“The advertising business in general has been a different business” of late, Chaffee said. “In Rhode Island, it’s a lot smaller than it used to be.”
While cleaning out his office at 90 Elm St., Chaffee said he found an old Providence listing for advertising agencies. “About three-fourths of them are no longer existing or have been merged with larger agencies,” he said. It is a sign of the tough economic times and what is happening in Rhode Island on a grand scale, he said.
“Part of it is the economy, and part of it is that there just isn’t the business here that there used to be,” Chaffee said. “It’s too bad. Business goes out-of-state and we don’t support our own.”
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