Studio furniture maker Omnirax has closed its doors.
“We are sorry to inform you that Omnirax is no longer able to proceed in business and we are unable to fulfill your orders,” wrote Chief Design Officer David Holland in a letter to a customer dated Nov. 28.
“We are undertaking to move forward into bankruptcy and under the advice of counsel will provide you with further information at the earliest possible time.”
The Omnirax website has been locked under password protection since at least Dec. 1, and the company has not been answering phone calls or emails, prompting concerns among broadcasters about its business status.
Company President Philip Zittell declined comment in response to queries from Radio World.
Several broadcast clients have told Radio World that they have pending orders with the company directly or through a dealer.
The letter announcing an intended bankruptcy proceeding was forwarded to Radio World from an Omnirax customer who had a pending order. He said he’d placed a deposit on Oct. 13 but was unable to contact anyone at the company starting about two weeks after that.
An engineering manager at one of the larger broadcast companies told Radio World that his employer had been notified with a similar letter from Omnirax.
A third client told Radio World that he has a current studio project built out with Omnirax cabinetry specs in mind and that he was due to receive his order in the first three weeks of December. He had not received a letter from the company but was advised by his dealer that the furniture apparently would not be shipped.
Several social media pages for the company remained live as of Dec. 7. The most recent tweet on X was dated Oct. 15.
Omnirax was founded in 1985 by business partners Philip Zittell and David Holland. It made furniture for broadcast, office and technical environments. It had its roots in a jewelry company, Sausalito Craftworks Inc.
According to a version of its website scraped in October at web.archive.org, Omnirax began building custom broadcast furniture when John Buckham, then of Entravision Communications, hired the company for a 27-studio project in Los Angeles, which led to a 12-studio job for Phil Lerza, chief engineer at KFRC, in San Francisco in 2004.
In 2021 the company introduced a line for the “work from home” market segment, and it had recently been pushing harder in the podcasting space.
