04/17/2026
** Thanj you to everyone who has offered to go and collect my inventory, I believe I have it covered now**
Here is what I know and my expierence with The Painted Tree, and the email we received on Tuesday. I was in 5/6 of the locations in the Houston area.
** I want to add, the employees had NO KNOWLEDGE of any of this and are victims just like the vendors, and all of then that I am in contact wit are BENDING over backwarss to help the vendors KNOWING they probably will not see another dime**
So I have not been paid by them since October. They owed me about $600, now I think it’s about $1200. (I have not sat down to figure it out, to be honest)
I stopped paying rent back in October. Which wasn’t much cause you only pay if you didn’t sell enough, so they still owe me either way.
I’ve tried for months to get my money and they never responded and when they did it was just bu****it, and closed my tickets with false promises of money.
When this all happened back in August / September all of a sudden they wanted everyone to sign up for direct deposit. This is when s**t hit the fan and people were not getting paid, were charged wrong amounts, or charged for stores the no longer hard, or even charged just for the hell of it. They used the “direct deposit” sign up as a cover for all the errors when in reality it was for them literally just stealing money.
About a month later they came out with a new “invoice / payment system” which was to pay your rent. However, the goal is that no one actually has to pay rent. The goal is to sell more than our rent every month so our store pays for it self. (In other words they take their portion out every month from our sales) So why would Painted Tree need an entire large invoice system overhaul. Around this time Painted Tree was sold to new owners.
When you first sign up for this invoicing system which all vendors were REQUIRED to do. You have to scroll down and agree to the terms like everything else. I actually refused, so I never made an account with this system. When I read the terms and conditions there were a lot of changes people did not know they were agreeing to. Like, if you do not turn in your “30 day notice” on time the you signed up for another year… that’s crazy it should have been month to month. It gave them access to DEBIT money from the card / bank account on file. I’ve spoken to over 5 people who have been charged thousands fraudulently, from accounts they have not had on file in YEARS. And seen many more online.
At this point I figured out they were not doing good financially (I actually was thoroughly convinced they were going to take off with our Xmas $ and clam bankruptcy then). SO, I stopped restocking, I wasn’t going to vacate my spaces and let them collect double rent. Plus i was convinced this was going to come crashing down. Which it has.
Then finally I got the email like everyone else on Tuesday. I prepared myself however for never coming back. (So if I walk away with nothing it will be ok, I would like my product back but if I don’t get it, it won’t kill me.) UNLIKE MANY others though.
Tuesday, they called a zoom meeting for every store. They told the managers to stop everything they are doing and go lock the doors, do not allow another customer inside, we are closed indefinitely effective immediately. They told the employees they would pay them out until April 24th (who knows if that’s true). About 15 minutes later vendors who had live stream cameras on their spaces stated getting notifications that the cameras were down. Vendors started calling to ask about their cameras, and the phone lines were disconnected.
Then the email came. Since Tuesday they have only reached out a handful of times to the employees to give directions but refuse to respond to any of their questions. Many stores are already locked up by the landlord’s some are going to reopen for vendors to get their belongings under the landlords security, and others are s**t outta luck.
I have spoke to people who just signed a contract as early as FRIDAY!!! Paid their rent and their deposit, purchased furniture, paint and inventory, to be down $2,000-$3,000 in an instant. I know that they have filed Chapter 7, so they are 99.9% will never see a dime. To a lot that’s DEVESTATING. Painted Tree did THOUSANDS of people SO SO DIRTY! I hope the news, and the courts get ahold of them.
I attached the email if yall want to read it. Since then Painted Tree has been RADIO SILENT expect to tell the managers to remove all cash and bring it to the bank immediately.
