The oldest business in Charlottesville?

Prostitution, obviously.

“After half an hour of thinking about this and googling around, I can’t come up with any older local business that’s still running, without interruption, and hasn’t been bought up by a larger business.”

For an outsider to the whole K&G saga (which you are not, so perhaps you don’t see this so clearly), it DOES seem relevant & logical in a “hey, that’s interesting” kind of way, to mention the bankruptcy part of the entire K&G history in response to a thread devoted to talking about long-lived Cville businesses. I mean, I found it to be non-jarring and perfectly logical when I read Hofe’s post. It wasn’t until you sailed in with your defensive-sounding response to Hofe (“So, HOfe how is this important to the discussion of Charlottesville’s oldest businesses?”) that I perked up and began to wonder what was going on. You have drawn far more attention to the bankruptcy aspect of the history than Hofe did.

Moreover, the fact that it turns out you do PR for K&G and did not divulge that fact until called on adds a negative cast to the whole discussion. Now, in my head, K&G is associated with “aggressively defensive moves on local chat board by bungling PR consultant who fails to divulge connection to K&G and then gets busted by Waldo.” That’s my image now of K&G. No big deal, of course, since I don’t have big bucks to drop on a diamond anyway. But still, PR…it seems like it’s supposed to work the other way, no?

Finally, re: your question:

“A question. Would you rather have had them change the name and lose it forever? Or continue to keep the legacy of an old Charlottesville company name going?”

You set up a false dichotomy — there are more than those two options. K&G could have kept the name and thus the legacy of a…of a name, but could ALSO do more to describe the more recent history of the company. I checked the website, and under “Our History,” the history stops at about 1893, when Keller and George were still in charge. That certainly leaves the impression that once K and G took over, nothing much else significant happened. Which is certainly not true, especially to anyone interested in “shopping locally.”

There’s no consortium involved in running the company today. Rather there was a consortium put together by the company that conducted the sale, of their firm with two retailers – one willing to purchase Schwarzschild and one willing to purchase Shreve Crump and Low and revive the brands.

A question. Would you rather have had them change the name and lose it forever? Or continue to keep the legacy of an old Charlottesville company name going?