Dover Saddlery in Huntington Station to close as part of horseback-riding equipment chain shutdown
Massachusetts-based retailer Dover Saddlery, which sells horseback-riding equipment, is closing all its stores, including their sole Long Island location. Credit: Howard Simmons
Horseback-riding equipment retailer Dover Saddlery is closing its remaining stores, including its sole Long Island location, in Huntington Station.
The 51-year-old, Massachusetts-based retailer, which sells apparel, bridles, saddles and other equipment for equestrians, is closing its remaining 25 stores, according to social media posts on each store's Facebook or Instagram account.
An employee in the Huntington Station store told Newsday Friday that all the retailer's stores would be closing, but said she didn't know when.
Going-out-of-business sale signs are posted on the windows of the Huntington Station store, which is located at 90 W. Jericho Tpke.
That store, which was the retailer's first in New York, opened in April 2013.
Dover Saddlery's website lists 25 stores in 19 states that were open as of Friday, including those in Latham in upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and California.
The retailer's Littleton, Massachusetts-based headquarters did not respond to a request for comment Friday. It is unclear how many employees companywide would be affected by the shutdown.
Dover Saddlery was taken over by its primary lender, an arm of Prudential Financial, and then sold in late April to Gordon Brothers, a Boston-based asset adviser and lender, The Boston Globe reported in May.
Neither Prudential nor Gordon Brothers responded to a request for comment.
Dover Saddlery told Massachusetts officials in May that it could shut down its Littleton headquarters if the company could not be sold to a new owner that would run it, which also would affect employees at 30 stores across the country, the Globe reported.
On May 7, Dover Saddlery filed notice with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development that it would be laying off 112 people in Littleton between July 7 and 20, according to a filing on the agency's website.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, requires that an employer notify the state if it will lay off at least 50 full-time employees at a worksite or meets other job-cut criteria within a 90-day period.
Dover Saddlery had been owned by private equity firms for a decade, The Boston Globe reported.
The retailer was founded in 1975 by Jim and David Powers, former members of the United States Equestrian Team's three-day event team, according to the retailer's website.
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
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