This weekend, Jason Blevins at The Denver Post examined the situation at Denver advertising agency Factory Design Labs, and it isn’t pretty:
The 20-year-old ad agency with super-posh offices in Cherry Creek once boasted The North Face, Aspen Skiing Co., Sports Authority, Oakley and Callaway Golf as clients. The big names are gone, and now the agency has left several magazines with unpaid bills and raised the ire of media outlets and at least one company that paid Factory to place ads.
Jonas Temple, CEO of FDL, acknowledged some challenges in a response to the article on Facebook:
In January 2015, I returned to Factory and partnered with Bob Reimer to lead a critical restructuring of the agency. Given the very difficult financial situation at that time, Bob and I identified two unimaginable choices for our strategy: file bankruptcy or fight to keep the doors open. With considerable pause we decided, as a company, to choose the more difficult road — continuing our commitments to our clients and our staff, and to the extent possible, make good on our historical debts.
During this process we have had to trim our staff, restructure the management team, radically reduce expenses, and generally create a new company that’s very different from our past.”
Denver Public Relations Blog 