WHITEFIELD, NH — Jointly owned bedroom furniture producers Brown Street Furniture and Vermont Tubbs suspended operations, citing financial difficulties from a lack of capital.

Furniture Today reports the furniture operations, which produce hand-finished furnishings in oak and other species, is making an effort to recapitalize and re-open. Owner Kyle Tager told FT he is looking for a foreign investor under the EB-5 visa program, which offers U.S. citizenship to individuals investing in a U.S. businesses. Tager said such an investment would allow the plant to reopen manufacturing operations by the fall.

The last 45 workers left the plant July 10. Brown Street Furniture began business in 1950 as a contract furniture manufacturer in Norfolk, CT, moving in 1967 to a vacant factory space in Whitefield, NH,a lumbering center. Tager acquired Brown Street Furniture in 2008; and acquired assets of Vermont Tubbs, which traces its history to 1840, and relocated it from Brandon, VT to Whitefield.