Aug. 16--Glass & Powder Boardshop is closing.

The Carytown snowboard and wakeboard shop will shut its doors by the end of this month, less than two years after emerging from bankruptcy with an agreement to pay back all creditors.

The company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in February 2006 a week after closing its store in Short Pump Town Center. It also closed a shop in Chesapeake that same year. The Carytown shop is the last location.

In a letter to customers, President Scott Dickens; Vice President Cara Dickens, his wife; and Treasurer Sanford Appelman wrote "adverse economic conditions, an unfortunate corporate expansion and subsequent restructuring, and countless legal bills have depleted any resources we had."

In an e-mail yesterday, Scott Dickens said the company would not comment further.

Glass & Powder Boardshop opened the Carytown store in 1998. In 2003, it added the other locations.

The same year, it won a local chamber Impact award for its "growth, innovation and community spirit."

By 2006, the chain filed for bankruptcy protection.

It emerged that December with an agreement to pay back creditors over six years about 29 cents on each dollar owed.

Company officials did not answer questions about whether creditors were repaid.

"We did some things extremely well and other things catastrophically bad," Scott Dickens wrote in the letter to customers. "Regardless of outcome, we always gave 110 percent with the same passion that drove us to start this business to begin with. It's discouraging to see it fade away." Contact Louis Llovio at (804) 649-6348 or LLLovio@timesdispatch.com.

Deputy business editor Gregory J. Gilligan contributed to this report.

-----

To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.