The Children’s Orchard chain has been sold and has closed its Ann Arbor store. Taylor Bond, who bought the string of “gently used” kids’ clothing franchises and moved the company headquarters to Ann Arbor in 2004, sold it to NTY Kids. Never heard of NTY Kids (NTY stands for “new to you”)? That’s because it doesn’t really have any stores other than its home base in Minnesota–it was a company looking for an established children’s brand, says Bond, and in Children’s Orchard it has found one.

There are currently thirty-two Children’s Orchard stores around the country, and those franchises should remain unaffected, but the company-run Ann Arbor store got sacrificed in the deal. “It all happened so quickly, there wasn’t any time to find a franchisee” to take it over, Bond says. Its short-lived companion store, Style Trader, where the mommies could shop for their own gently used duds, died too. “Style Trader was a test concept. But NTY already has a women’s brand, Style Mentor.”

“I’ve known Ron Olson for years,” Bond said of NTY’s president, who started the company with his son Chad. “The resale world is a small community,” and Ron Olson is its living legend–he bought and nurtured such well-known resale brands as Plato’s Closet, Play It Again Sports, Once Upon a Child, and Computer Renaissance. In fact, Bond and the senior Olson met when Bond bought the very first Computer Renaissance franchise back in the 1990s: “Coincidentally, that store was also in the Colonnade, a few doors down from Children’s Orchard–we were next to where Oreck’s is now, I think.” Those were the days, he says: “New computers cost $3,000; you could buy a used one for $500 and sell it for $1000. Everyone was happy.”

Bond freely admits that his interest and expertise is not children’s clothing, but in selling franchises. “A lot of people think they’ll open a business and then franchise it, but owning a business and being a franchisor are different skill sets”–the latter is about “selling units, supporting those units, building the brand.” What’s next for Bond? “I’m still going to be in town. I’ll continue in franchising. I’m interested in data mining. Lots of companies know how to collect data–very few know how to make sense of it.”

Great Lakes Zoological Society, the little reptile zoo and reptile-themed gift shop on Jackson Rd., closed in February. The nonprofit was founded by Mark Creswell, who had a passion for reptiles, said treasurer Tom Titus, “but the revenue wasn’t there to sustain the cost.” The GLZS was a rescue and rehab center for reptiles, which Creswell felt needed their own specific version of the humane society. Reptiles are complicated, says Titus: “A lot of people will get an exotic animal and not know how to care for it. What’s good for an iguana is not good for a monitor.”

At some point, Nick Kamouni, who opened the Smoke Station on Packard in 2012 selling tobacco, hookahs, and related accessories, turned it into a hookah lounge called Burn, then sold it. Josh Cao, who works there, says he thinks the name change as well as the ownership change took place last August. The new owners are “Pat and Vinnie”–last names unknown, at least to Cao. Pat and Vinnie didn’t take us up on an invitation to provide further information.

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