A legendary lavender shop in Ashland faced an unexpected obstacle earlier this year when its supplier mysteriously closed its store.

Julie Harden owned Pelindaba Lavender in Ashland for five years.

Her shop was recognizable by its deep purple paint and the lingering scent of flowers that wafted down the street.

It was a franchise of Pelindaba Lavender, a popular farm in the San Juan Islands in Washington state.

One afternoon in late January, Harden was driving back from an appointment at the DMV when she received an unusual call.

“I finally get in the car, dial the number and then hear that the farm is shutting down,” Harden said. “They told employees they have until February 8 to return their laptops and that they are not allowed on the premises.”

The farm had become a popular tourist destination on the islands over its twenty-plus years of operation, and also distributed products and ingredients to Pelindaba Lavender stores in Oregon, Washington, Texas, Georgia and Florida.

Store owners called from across the country and began piecing everything together, only to find they were thousands of dollars short of pre-ordered supplies.

Harden’s first thought was what did this mean? She wondered why franchisor and owner of Pelindaba Lavender, Stephen Robins, had not informed franchisees about the farm’s closure.

“From telling us the length of a piece of Scotch tape we could use to put a sign on the front door to suddenly shutting down the website without a single message, this was very out of character for us,” Harden said.

Aimee Hauff formerly owned a Pelindaba Lavender franchise in Edmonds, Washington. She said Robins alerted store owners to a July 2023 press release in which he said he would put his farmland up for sale as part of a “strategic operation.”

“He explained, ‘I’m basically going to get the money out of my land,'” Hauff said. “It will be like an investment property — the buyer will lease it back to Pelindaba LLC and it would be a technical business transaction where they would be an investor, but they would get it leased back to them.”

Hauff, who has a background in real estate, was skeptical about the decision to sell the farmland.

The store owners asked Robins to provide further explanations. Instead, Robins said he was confused by the request.

“Both the content and manner of both questions are more than a little concerning,” Robins said when the store owners asked him in an email if he was being honest with them about the farm’s financial situation. “Hopefully, as you absorb my answers and our relationship progresses, there will be less cause for such concerns, let alone expressing them in this manner.”

Contrary to Robins’ statements, San Juan County court records show allegations that he was behind on payments on a series of loans he took out from Banner Bank between 2012 and 2019.

According to court documents, he allegedly used accounts, inventory, personal property and life insurance policies as collateral and extended the due dates of all loans multiple times until “all amounts became due and owing” in April 2023.

Ultimately, the bank claimed that Robins was over $3 million in debt. A month later, the bank filed suit against him, seeking foreclosure on his properties.

Both Harden and Hauff confirmed that the store owners were not informed of the farm’s financial situation during their business relationship with Robins, even though court documents were publicly available.

Robins did not respond to multiple requests for comment. His attorney also declined to comment.

Hauff said Robins still hasn’t spoken to the store owners.

“He has not spoken to us or openly admitted his wrongdoing,” she said. “Even if it was just a personal apology, that wouldn’t make things any better because I’m still out of money, but it would at least show me that he admits he did something wrong.”

According to Hauff, communication between the store owners and Robins ended in early January. Three Pelindaba stores were forced to close. Then in March, the farm published an Instagram post announcing its closure and tagging the four surviving franchises.

“It sounded like it was kind of planned and no big deal,” Hauff said of the tag in the Instagram post. “And in the background, it was all nonsense because none of us knew about it.”

Harden said she and the owners faced a simultaneous decision: They could either close their stores, some of which were six or seven years old, or try to reposition them, a costly and time-consuming process.

“You don’t have a lot of money at that point,” Harden said. “And then you sit there and think, ‘Hey, I’m owed $13,000. That’s pretty much the amount we need to rebalance.'”

Harden said the money never came, but with just enough supplies to stay open in the months after the farm closed, she began looking for new lavender suppliers and began sourcing products.

“I knew some of our local farms well and had already built relationships with them,” Harden said. “Being able to choose the finished products or the raw ingredients they have really did the trick.”

Harden changed the name of her store from Pelindaba Lavender Ashland to True Lavender Collective. She said the name represents her vision of showcasing the best lavender Oregon has to offer from various local farms and brands.

After many months, she still cannot understand why Robins has not communicated with her.

“I think in the end he was embarrassed and didn’t want to accept that it was happening and probably couldn’t deal with it,” she said.

As for the farm, according to the San Juan County District Attorney’s Office, a summary hearing is scheduled for September 17 to decide what will happen to the once fragrant Pelindaba lavender farm.