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LEHI — Lehi police are investigating the Utah-based company Jane.com after sellers on the site are complaining they haven't been paid.
Many of those sellers contacted KSL-TV on Friday saying they hadn't been paid in weeks. The problem is costing them precious time and money ahead of the holiday shopping season.
KSL-TV attempted to make contact with Jane.com offices in Lehi, including attempts made to reach the company's co-founder and other officials, but no response was received.
A former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said that employees were let go without severance pay on Friday.
"When we first started it was exclusively with Jane," Brian Kunz said, the CEO of Qualtry.
Qualtry is based out of Lindon and sells personalized gifts on Jane.com.
"Jane's been a great marketplace," he said.
It was, up until Friday. Now it appears the company no longer exists. When searched, the website now reads "down for maintenance," and leaves hundreds of sellers in the dark.
"We were owed a little over $50,000," Kunz said. "It is a big number, but I know that it affects a lot of companies a lot more than us. A lot of these companies were selling exclusively on Jane."
One seller, Laura Mederos, operates out of Los Angeles. She'd been selling on Jane since 2014.
"When I really was like, 'Wait a second,' was about two weeks ago. I needed to get a payment and I showed that I had a payment available to be released and I wasn't getting paid," Mederos said. "I started emailing them; no response."
Mederos said she's out close to $2,000.
"I have a bag of orders I decided I'm still going to ship them. I feel bad for the customer at this point and I'm just like what am I going to do with the inventory anyways?" Mederos said.
Sellers on the marketplace have posted online and sent the amount owed to them by Jane.com to KSL-TV, adding up to potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. KSL-TV has not yet been able to verify those numbers due to the lack of communication from the online marketplace.
The company, founded in 2011, originally described itself as a women-focused platform for female entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses.
According to an anonymous former employee, Joana McKenna, the former CEO of Jane.com, left in July. The current CEO is Krista Kochivar, who before taking on the role served the company as CFO.
Any sellers that have balances owed to them by Jane.com can file a police report with Lehi Police.
Correction: A previous version identified Joana McKenna, who left the company this summer, as the CEO. Krista Kochivar is the current CEO.
