An Airbnb-style provider of luxury apartment rentals for extended stays in the New York City region were faced with financial challenges. The company’s investors, who served as directors of the company, learned that the company’s founder had been diverting customers’ rental down payments for personal uses.
Realizing that the organization faced an influx of overseas visitors to the NYC area expecting apartments that would not be available to them, the company’s attorneys and investors relied on our expert guidance. The firm worked closely with company’s directors, attorneys, and remaining management team members, beginning with a forensic due-diligence process and then in developing an exhaustive FAQ page to replace the company’s website homepage. We also developed a separate set of customized Q&As to help prep management for any press inquiries or specific inquiries from disenfranchised customers whose concerns were not directly addressed in the FAQs.
The company’s directors as well as other advisors credited the FAQs and overall communications effort with staving off what they feared might have been a virtual tsunami of angry customer inquiries and complaints. This well-crafted communication plan better protected the directors and enabled them to go ahead with an orderly Chapter 7 liquidation of the company.
