Bullish on Santa : Publicly Traded Shell Firm Acquires Anaheim-Based Christmas Guild
So what if Santa has spent centuries keeping a low profile, a kind of merry mystique. Those days are over now; Kris Kringle’s going public.
Reindeer-philes will soon be able to snap up shares of the Christmas Guild, an Anaheim-based chain of temporary December decoration stores.
Christmas Guild started out in 1978 as a sideline for John and Cathy MacDonald, company president and vice president, a way to make “pin money.” For the nine months ended March 31, however, the Guild said it recorded profits of $61,190 on sales of $4.9 million.
“It was a strictly part-time venture in 1978, with my wife heading it up,” John MacDonald said Friday. “I was a manufacturer’s representative who dealt in Christmas things. . . . But it (the Guild) went from one store to two to three to 14. About five years ago, I got out of the other things and came into this full time.”
The Christmas Guild’s main business is opening up Christmas stores in high-end temporary locations for the final three months of each year, John MacDonald said.
In addition to the short-term stores in such locations as South Coast Plaza, Beverly Center and Westside Pavilion, the company has three permanent outlets, which sell patio furniture and home decorations between Christmases.
While the Guild sells everything from artificial trees to tinsel, MacDonald said it specializes in such tony trinkets as handblown Czechoslovakian glass ornaments and authentic German nutcrackers.
On Friday, MacDonald announced that the Christmas Guild had been acquired by a public, Denver-based shell company called Oxford Venture Corp. in an all-stock deal that he said was valued at about $2.5 million. A shell company is a publicly traded corporation that typically has no business operations until it acquires a another firm.
The MacDonalds got 94.5 million shares of Oxford stock in the deal, while Oxford’s founder and investors kept about 25.5 million shares.
MacDonald said Oxford’s stock has traded recently for about 2 3/4 cents per share in the over-the-counter market. The company is seeking approval to be listed on the National Assn. of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation system.
“The net effect is that we get them ,” MacDonald said. “This allows us to become a public company without going through a lot of expense and time.”
MacDonald said he will change the company’s name to “Christmas Guild.” Oxford’s board of directors was disbanded “in five minutes” and was replaced by John and Cathy MacDonald.
Doesn’t sound much like Christmas spirit, but MacDonald said the move will help his company spread holiday cheer throughout Southern California, instead of restricting its efforts to the Los Angeles Basin.
Oxford officials could not be reached for comment.
“In general terms, we expect to double our annual sales volume in the next three to five years, maybe sooner,” MacDonald said. “As far as earnings are concerned, I have great hopes that it will improve substantially.”
