Nuevo, the Canadian contemporary furniture and lighting brand, suspended operations last Friday. In a terse email sent to business partners on Monday, the company announced that it would cease conducting business but that it hoped to resume “in the next 30 days.”

Calls and emails to the company went unanswered at press time, though its reps have been informing partners directly of the shutdown. While the status of open orders remains unknown, the brand’s customers—which include a mix of brick-and-mortar retailers, e-commerce sites and designers—are potentially poised to be left in the lurch if this pause in operations turns into a permanent shutdown. On LinkedIn, several of Nuevo’s staff members have added an #opentowork hashtag to their profile pictures.

In addition to its own line of product, Nuevo is the North American distributor of Vietnamese furniture brand District Eight, which reps have informed customers is still operational.

Nuevo, once known as Nouveau Americana, was founded in Toronto in 1990. According to the brand’s website, it designed furniture in-house and outsourced production from “manufacturers around the world.” The product is sold by chains like Safavieh and Stickley as well as independent retailers throughout the U.S. and Canada. The company had also worked in recent years to develop relationships with designers—its website features a partnership highlighting the work of Memphis-based designer David Quarles IV.

Though the exact cause for the shutdown remains unknown, Nuevo is hardly alone in facing business challenges. Ever since the end of the pandemic home boom, retail brands of all stripes have been suffering. Independent furniture stores have been closing at a steady clip, while several high-profile bankruptcies have made national news. These are the more visible casualties of what has been a downturn in demand for home goods, but behind the scenes, the vendors who stock retailers’ shelves have been feeling the heat as well.

“This post-pandemic home slump has been an equal opportunity destroyer: Companies up and down the food chain have been struggling,” says Warren Shoulberg, a veteran trade reporter and Business of Home’s retail columnist. “We’ve seen bad numbers from the big publicly listed retail companies, and if the independent stores shared their results, you’d likely see the same. It stands to reason that if people aren’t buying furniture, the pain is going to work its way back up the supply chain.”