Lost in the election noise was a report from NHBR last week that Brookstone’s bankruptcy was “official.” The chain, headquartered in Merrimack, New Hampshire, had fallen on hard times, attracting our attention when a reader tried to argue that the Granite State’s tax system was to blame for companies like Brookstone going out of business.
Related: NH Economy Sets Records for Employment and Labor Force Participation
To borrow from Grumpy Cat, No!
The bulk of Brookstone’s brick and mortar retail outlets are in Malls with a smattering of location in airports. Its products are a mostly higher-end set of quirky items with nearly no mass appeal. So, it is a niche or specialty concern operating out of some of the most expensive commercial spaces located in the retail cemeteries formerly known as shopping malls.
Creative destruction is not New Hampshire’s fault, nor does it have anything to do with tax policy. The free market landscape shifts constantly. Brookstone has fallen and it can’t get up.
Changing New Hampshire’s tax policy, one that year-after-year keeps its overall tax burden one of the lowest in the nation would have no impact at all on the solvency of Brookstone.
None. Not now, not ever.
Brookstone continues to exist while it works to sell assets and pay off debt. The Merrimack headquarters was sold for 6 million dollars and NHBR was unable to report on where the remaining employees will shack up to continue the work or where they will do the work of ‘managing’ what’s left. But if there ever is such a thing as a good time for your company to go under in New Hampshire, this is it.
- New Hampshire’s real per capita personal income is up more than $4,000 since the recession.
- Hillsborough County was in the top ten counties in the country for wage growth last year.
- As of August New Hampshire was among the top five states (for wage growth).
- Only 8,004 Granite Staters were working at the minimum wage or less in 2017 (a 48 percent decline from 2016).
- Less than 1 percent of New Hampshire’s working-age population makes the minimum wage or less.
- 49.4 percent of Granite Staters who make the minimum wage or less are between the ages of 16-24.
We’ve got a labor shortage so finding a great job has never been easier. For now.
Democrats were handed control of the levers of government, sans the corner office, thanks to college kids. The Left will do everything in their ideological power to crack Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s thin ideological shell. A covering that was riddled with lines and missing pieces when he had a Republican majority.
The next two years will be interesting.
Related: Kevin Hassett: No, This Is Not Obama’s Economy
H/T NHBR
