The Fall of Painted Tree Boutiques: A Small Business Owner’s Story of Loss, Chaos, and Recovery

The Fall of Painted Tree Boutiques or as I like to call it “The Fallen Tree”….

Last weekend, I flew to Ohio to restock my booth because it had been doing so well. I spent the entire weekend working on it, and by Monday I had finished everything—refilled inventory, adjusted displays, all the little details that make a space feel complete. I remember standing there feeling proud of it. It was one of those moments where the hard work actually feels like it’s paying off.

I flew back to Colorado right after that and went into my day job Tuesday morning like normal. There was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong. No email, no message, nothing from Painted Tree.

The first time I heard anything was from another maker who messaged me on Instagram asking if I had seen the news. He sent me a screenshot of an email saying that Painted Tree was shutting down all business operations effective immediately. Vendors had ten days to get everything out.

I never received that email.

Even reading the screenshot, it was hard to believe. The date in the email was wrong, and the messaging was vague and honestly kind of alarming. It said locations might not stay open, that employees would be managing things even though they likely wouldn’t be paid, and that landlords could take control of buildings at any time. The advice was basically to come as soon as possible before you potentially got locked out. So, I called the store manager to confirm and sure enough, it was happening…

Some locations locked within just a few days due to Painted Tree not paying building rents.

I was only in three locations at the time, and I had just moved out of one the month before, which now feels incredibly lucky. But I kept thinking about the people who had booths in eight, ten, even twenty locations across different states. I don’t know how anyone was supposed to deal with that in ten days, especially with no warning.

What’s hardest to process is that April rent had already been taken, and sales were still happening for the first part of the month. I personally had over $600 in sales during those first twelve days, and I’ll never see that money. Security deposits are gone too, which is another full month of rent. When I added it all up, I’m out about $3,000, and I know there are plenty of people who lost a lot more. Some people lost $10,000 or more in business loss.

There wasn’t really time to sit with any of that though, because it immediately turned into a race to get everything out before the doors closed.

For my Colorado location, I asked a few friends if they could help and rented a U-Haul. It was about a 70-mile drive, and I didn’t want to risk waiting even a day. We just went for it.

When we got there, it was chaos. There were hundreds of small business owners doing the exact same thing—packing up, loading carts, trying to move as fast as possible. There wasn’t any kind of organized system. No one was checking IDs, and it honestly felt like anyone could have walked in and taken whatever they wanted. The employees who were there looked overwhelmed. You could tell they had been put in an impossible position and were just trying to get through it. I apologized to them as I knew they were out of a job and probably out of a paycheck as well. Thank goodness they showed up for us vendors, I will never forget that.

I was able to get everything out that day, which felt like a huge relief, but it still didn’t feel real.

My other booth was in Ohio, which made everything more complicated. I had less than 24 hours to figure out how to handle it, so I started calling family—my cousin, my mom, my uncle, my aunts—and asked if they could help. They showed up and somehow cleared out my entire booth in a single day and stored everything in my brother’s garage. I still don’t know how they pulled it off that quickly, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. I still work a day job and had my own stuff to figure out in Colorado!

A lot of people didn’t have that kind of support. I saw people trying to coordinate movers, renting trucks last minute, scrambling to find storage, or just walking away from their booths because they couldn’t physically get there in time.

Looking back on it now, it’s not just the financial loss that stands out. It’s how quickly everything unraveled and how little control any of us had once it started. As small business owners, we take on so much risk upfront—time, money, energy—and we trust that the systems we’re operating within are at least somewhat stable. This situation made it very clear how fragile that can be.

At the same time, the only reason I was able to get through it as smoothly as I did was because of people. Friends who dropped what they were doing to help me load a truck. Family who cleared out a booth 1,200 miles away with almost no notice. Other vendors sharing information in real time so we could make decisions quickly.

So what now?

Right now, I’m sitting on a lot of stagnant inventory. I’m planning to do a sidewalk sale in my neighborhood, which will hopefully help move some of it, even if it’s just a little.

There’s also a strong chance that some of these locations will reopen under new ownership. The buildings themselves are already set up for this kind of business—booths built out, electrical, checkout counters, dressing rooms—so it wouldn’t take much for someone to step in and relaunch a similar concept.

I’ve heard that a company called Copper Mill Mercantile may take over the Colorado Springs location, and that an independent investor could take over the Lewis Center, Ohio store. I’ve made sure I’m on both lists if and when that happens.

In the meantime, I’m looking at other options too—antique malls, online sales at 25–50% off , and just figuring out how to move forward without sitting on inventory for too long.

What led up to this

The reality is, this didn’t come completely out of nowhere.

Painted Tree used to be a very different company before it was sold in 2025. Vendors used to receive physical checks in the mail at the end of each month. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Check out my blog here about what it was like initially.

The first real red flag was when they switched to direct deposit in November, right before the busiest retail season of the year, without properly testing the system. Almost immediately, people were missing payments—thousands and thousands of dollars owed to vendors.

Everyone was talking about it, mostly on Facebook groups, trying to figure out what was going on. People were submitting cases through the vendor helpline email and getting no response. There was no phone number to call, and store managers had no control over payments or visibility into what was happening.

I opened a case myself because I had been overcharged rent for five months. I never heard back. I followed up again two months later. Still nothing.

And I didn’t have it that bad. Some people were out astronomical amounts of money.

After the direct deposit issues started, there was essentially no communication from the company. They were overwhelmed with backpay issues, case submissions, and frustrated vendors, and there was no clear way out of contracts.

At the same time, rents were quietly increased without notice. It would just show up on your statement—if you even received a statement.

Despite all of this, they were still onboarding new vendors, still collecting first month’s rent and security deposits, all while, in hindsight, likely knowing they were heading toward bankruptcy in 2026.

One of the strangest moments was just two weeks before everything shut down, when they announced a new CEO. She had been one of the largest vendors in the company, with booths across a huge number of locations. The announcement made it sound like a positive turning point, like things were going to improve.

Then, two weeks later, it was over. Check out my news feature below from KKTV Colorado Springs.

If you want to support my business

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading and for caring about what small businesses are going through right now. This situation has left me with a large amount of inventory that was meant for my Painted Tree booths, and I’m working on finding new homes for all of it.

I’ve added many of these items to my website, and for the next couple of weeks I’m offering 20% off with code FALLENTREE.

You can shop here:
👉 https://www.parksartcollection.com

Every order genuinely helps right now, and I appreciate it more than I can put into words.

You can also follow along on Instagram where I’ve been sharing updates in real time:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/parksartcollection

Come to a Pop Up Market and shop many small businesses in person. Shop in person here.