Venice-based Tervis tumbler files for bankruptcy, layoffs expected

One of Sarasota County’s marquee businesses has filed for bankruptcy amid stiff market competition.

Venice-based Tervis, a national drinkware company founded in 1946 , announced it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy ahead of a company-wide reorganization for future growth. Layoffs are expected, the company said, though it’s unclear how many workers they will impact and when they will take place.

The announcement comes almost a year after the company tapped Hosana Fieber as its new CEO . Tervis cited a “disruption of the market” and a drop in retail spending as the catalyst for the shift, as other drinkware companies like Yeti and Stanley have skyrocketed in recent years.

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Tervis owes its primary creditor, the southeastern U.S.-based United Community Bank, almost $5 million. The company filed a motion for permission to use its estimated $7.85 million in cash collateral to continue its operations.

As a private company, Tervis’ exact assets and revenue aren’t available, but according to bankruptcy documents obtained by the Herald-Tribune, the company’s current assets fall between $10 million and $50 million. Its liabilities are listed in the same range.

Tervis a flagship manufacturer in Sarasota County for decades

Tervis has been a major employer in Sarasota County for decades.

Michigan businessmen Frank Cotter and G. Howlett Davis founded the company in 1946. They used the natural insulating property of air, harnessing it in a double-walled tumbler, according to Herald-Tribune archives.

The duo combined the last three letters of each of their names, and "Tervis" was born.

Donelly’s grandfather, John Winslow, bought Tervis in the 1960s and moved the factory to U.S. 41 in Osprey, where the company continued to operate a store well into the 21st century. Norbert Donelly, Rogan’s father, took over the family business in the late 1980s and grew the factory from the 12 employees it had then to the roughly 700 it had as recently as 2017, at a site visible from Interstate 75, with a capacity to produce up to 90,000 cups a day.

A shift came in the mid-'90s, when Tervis began gaining collegiate athletic licenses, Norbert Donelly told the Herald-Tribune. The sports logos gave Tervis a new footing with consumers and set the tone for major deals with Disney, Marvel and the NFL.

The company grew from those hand-assembled cups and felt emblems to printing plastic sheets sporting Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter and Snoopy. Under Norbert Donelly’s leadership, the Osprey factory grew to cut deals with some of the most notable brands in the country.

Tervis layoffs loom

The company’s principal address is still listed at 201 Triple Diamond Blvd . in North Venice, through property records report Tervis sold the 12.5-acre plot to 201 Triple Diamond Holdings LLC last August for almost $15.5 million. Tervis has since been subleasing the property from the new owner to continue its operations, it said in a press release.

The 201 Triple Diamonds Holding LLC is a subsidiary of Buligo Capital: a capital investment firm with offices in Pennsylvania and Israel. Its website lists the 201 Triple Diamond facility as an industrial asset in “the desirable ‘Sarasota Outlying’ submarket” planned for “an aggressive leasing program and capital improvements” in the future.

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The company currently lists a bi-weekly payroll of $305,000 among 129 employees , per bankruptcy documents. Tervis will slash the payroll to $205,000 by the beginning of November, according to the documents, and its 401k match program and health insurance payouts are projected to drop by similar margins in the same timeframe.

In addition to the cash collateral motion, Tervis has filed legal motions to continue its operations and pay its employees wages for Sept.1 through Sept. 4 — the workdays of the current pay period that fell before the company filed for bankruptcy. It will appear in bankruptcy court Sept. 9 at Tampa’s Sam M. Gibbons United States Courthouse.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — or WARN Act — requires companies with 100 or more employees to issue a notice of layoffs within 60 days of the layoffs taking place. Violations render the company liable to each affected employee for pay and benefits for each day the warning isn’t issued.

As of Friday afternoon, no such notice from Tervis has been published on the FloridaCommerce website.

Contact Herald-Tribune Growth and Development Reporter Heather Bushman at hbushman@gannett.com . Follow her on Twitter @hmb_1013.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Venice-based Tervis tumbler files for bankruptcy, layoffs expected