Triad Appliance Center made the news last week because it shut its doors and put a sign up saying that they were closing due to an illness in the family.  Later a different sign was on the door saying that customers could contact Brad Ellison Appliances to get their appliances, but according to the woman interviewed in the WXII story Brad Ellison Appliances was telling Triad Appliance customers who'd already paid for their appliances that they'd need to pay again.

In a later WXII story it was revealed that the owner of Triad Appliance Center was Thi Alderman, who is the ex-wife of Brad Ellison, he of Brad Ellison Appliances. This got my curiosity up so I decided to do a little hunting and pecking online. 

First I searched the North Carolina Secretary of State database of corporations by company name and no active companies named Triad Appliance Center popped up.  Next I searched by registered agent and that's when I found Brad Ellison Appliances Inc. of Mocksville which was originally registered in 2000 and filed papers to dissolve the business in September, 2006. I couldn't find a mention of Thi Alderman or Thi Ellison anywhere in the state database.

Next up was a good old fashioned Google search.  Most of the results were Yellow Pages-type directory listings but on the second page of results I found a listing on a site called Coltera that listed Ellisons Triad Appliance Center and gave the same address as the address for Triad Appliance Center.  It also had this tidbit:

ELLISONS TRIAD APPLIANCE CENTER is in the Electrical Appliances, Television and Radio Sets industry in WINSTON SALEM, NC. This company currently has approximately 100 to 250 employees and annual sales of $10,000,000 to $24,999,999.

If Coltera's data is correct then the store had a significantly larger operation than you'd guess by looking at the store.

Next I decided to look up the property records for the store.  The owner of the land is listed as Ellison Brad Properties LLC and it shows the same address as that shown on the dissolved corporation of Brad Ellison Appliances Inc. of Mocksville and a company that is currently listed by North Carolina as Brad Ellison Properties LLC. I'm assuming that the county has the names "brad" and "ellison" backwards on the property database. So, Brad Ellison owns the land and store, but doesn't own the business.

Unfortunately the county doesn't provide it's business name database online so I can't seem to find the ownership information without going down to the registrar's office. Still, it's funny that I can't find any record with the state of a Thi Alderman or a Thi Ellison as an owner of any business, yet I can find her ex-husband as an owner of an apparently defunct appliance business and the land and building that Thi Alderman's business is housed in.

As I mentioned above, in the earlier WXII story a customer named Lisa Johnson was interviewed and she said that Brad Ellison was the salesperson who originally sold her the appliances at Triad, and yet he was also the person who offered to try and make things right when he opens up a new appliance business in a couple of weeks.  The reporter, Jermont Terry, also interviewed Ellison and he claimed that although he owned the land he was not the owner of the store and was in fact owed money by the store owner, aka his ex-wife. He also said he had no idea why the store wasn't open or delivering the merchandise that customers had paid for.

In the later WXII story they say that customers went to court and secured an injunction against the business and that Thi Alderman was escorted by county deputies to the building to unlock it and refused to comment at the time.  There was supposed to be a hearing this morning (Monday, Dec. 15) so maybe many of the questions I'm about to ask will be answered, but in the meantime here's what I'm wondering:

• How could Ellison have worked at the store as a salesman and been his ex-wife's landlord and not known what was going on?
• How come his ex-wife doesn't show up anywhere as a registered agent for a business in North Carolina and there isn't a "Triad Appliance Center" registered in North Carolina? Is she the owner in name only and he's really the person running the operation? (Note: If I get the chance to go downtown and look at the county's business name records I might be able to get some of this info, or if someone else has it please do share).
• More of a legal question: if the customers discover that Thi Alderman was merely a front person can the customer's go after Ellison for restitution?

People in these parts have become accustomed to hearing about textile plant closings and mass layoffs by textile companies.  We also know that those jobs went overseas, but do we know exactly where all those clothes we're wearing get made now?  If you're curious check out  whereamiwearing.com which is a blog written by a guy named Kelsey Timmerman who decides to travel the world to see where his clothes are made.  There's also a book by the same title and truth be told the blog has a lot more than just his exploration of where his clothes are made. Still, it's a site that might be of particular interest to the folks here in the Piedmont Triad who have been so directly impacted by the textile industry's massive shift to overseas production.  Here's a link to his page with posts categorized as Where I'm Wearing Today: Adventures of an Engaged Consumer, which is as good a place to start as any.