An activist investor wants to shake things up at Ethan Allen. Doug Bergeron, who has built up a 5 percent stake in the Danbury, Connecticut–based furniture company through an entity called DGB Investment Inc., published an open letter to shareholders on August 5, where he makes the case for replacing the brand’s entire board of directors, citing Ethan Allen’s stagnant growth and increasing irrelevance with younger consumers

“Despite years of Chairman, President and CEO Farooq Kathwari’s promises of being ‘well positioned,’ the company has only paid lip service to shareholder demands for investment in innovation, modernization and the digital capabilities needed to compete in today’s growing luxury furniture market,” wrote Bergeron. “The result is a business whose revenue has declined for two decades, shrinking while competitors have taken market share and grown into multibillion-dollar platforms. This underperformance, in light of the impressive underlying assets, is, in my view, unjustifiable and inexcusable.”

Bergeron, the former CEO of payment processing platform Verifone, also announced that he has nominated himself and five other candidates for election to the board of directors at the company’s 2026 shareholder’s meeting: Chairish co-founder and former president Anna Brockway, former eBay strategy chief Kristine Miller, former Wayfair chief commercial officer Steve Oblak, former Barclays Group executive Lindsay O’Reilly, and former Neiman Marcus executive Stefanie Tsen Ward.

Of his nominees, Bergeron wrote: “These director candidates bring the experience that the current Board lacks across luxury and specialty retail, home furnishings, e-commerce, omnichannel execution, brand revitalization and customer acquisition, reinforced by expertise in audit and risk oversight, capital allocation and public company governance. This is not a slate assembled to criticize from the sidelines; it is a slate prepared to govern, oversee a leadership transition and help restore growth.”

Bergeron, who also launched a website for shareholders to learn about his campaign, argues that the company “has a healthy balance sheet with $187.5 million in total cash and investments and no debt.” He points to the company’s leadership failing to reinvest in the brand as a key problem; he was also critical of the fact that Kathwari, who has held his chairman and CEO roles for 38 years, has failed to lay out a succession plan.

This is not the first time that he has pushed to oust a company’s board of directors. In 2020, he led a successful proxy campaign to appoint an entirely new board of directors of Cantaloupe Inc. (then known as USA Technologies), a self-service commerce company, ultimately becoming chairman of the board himself before leading the company to be sold for $848 million in 2026—a more than 89 percent total shareholder return after the start of the proxy contest.

Shareholder activism like Bergeron’s is on the rise across the country. A recent report from the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance found that 2025 saw a record-breaking number of campaigns, many of them pushing for new or refreshed boards. These campaigns are also increasingly successful. In a review of 2025 shareholder activism, the Barclays Shareholder Advisory Group clocked 141 U.S. campaigns, and noted that 32 CEOs resigned within one year of an activist campaign—a 60 percent increase over the four-year average. Activists who waged public campaigns demanding a board seat in the country had a 75 percent success rate last year, up from a four-year average of 64 percent.

A large part of Bergeron’s argument hinges on Ethan Allen’s standing in the luxury furniture sector, pointing to the increase in annual revenue that peers like RH, Williams-Sonoma and Arhaus have seen in recent years, while Ethan Allen has seen a decline. Bergeron claims that the brand’s outdated approach to e-commerce risks making the company irrelevant to younger consumers. “Ethan Allen’s failure to modernize its business raises the risk of missing out on an entire generation of design-conscious customers who are now buying homes and are in their peak home improvement years,” he wrote.

The company has acknowledged receipt of Bergeron’s proposal and the board said it would review his director nominees and present its recommendation in a definitive proxy statement, which will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and mailed to shareholders.

A representative for Ethan Allen declined to comment further for this article.