NORTH KINGSTOWN – Retail catalog company BlueSky Brands Inc. has unexpectedly shut its doors, as have subsidiaries Paragon Gifts Inc. of Westerly and AB&C Group, a McLean, Va.-based third-party fulfillment company, The Westerly Sun reports.

BlueSky, established in 2005 by private equity firm Reliant Equity Investors, was also the parent company of the Bits and Pieces, Bits and Pieces U.K., National Wildlife Direct and Wintherthur catalogs. But Winterthur – the former home of Henry Francis du Pont and a museum dedicated to American antiques – told The Sun it had terminated its license last Thursday, hours before the shutdown.

Workers received no notice of the closures, and were left without back pay and vacation pay, the Westerly newspaper and The Journal, of Martinsburg, W.Va., both said.

As of last week, trade journal Multichannel Merchant said, Paragon reportedly was closed and the National Wildlife and Winterthur catalogs were down to skeleton crews, while Bits and Pieces was the only division still fully staffed. Executives Jean O. Geismann, former senior vice president of creative for BlueSky, and Brad Bishop, president of Paragon Gifts, both were laid off on Feb. 29, Geismann told Multichannel on March 13.

The journal blamed the company’s rapid expansion over the past three years, saying that, “by several accounts, BlueSky Brands incurred too much debt in its acquisitions.”

The Web sites and telephone messages at the various divisions provided little or no information. But The Sun noted that a search of databases in a number of jurisdictions – including Delaware, where BlueSky was incorporated; Rhode Island, where it was headquartered; and West Virginia, where two AB&C facilities have been shuttered – turned up no evidence of any bankruptcy filing. And R.I. Sen. Dennis Algiere, R-Westerly and Charlestown, told The Sun that, after receiving “a number of calls from people who found [Paragon] shut down,” he called the state Attorney General’s Office “to determine whether this situation warrants an investigation.”

The Web site www.BlueSkyBrandsInc.com remained active. But the corporation, CEO Robert Pulciani, parent company Reliant Equity Investors, the catalog titles and the lawyer listed in the R.I. Secretary of State’s corporations database did not respond to media requests for comment.