Gary Friedman, chairman and CEO of U.S. reproduction business, Restoration Hardware, and its creative mind, has 'resigned' over 'an inappropriate relationship' with a 26 year old female employee of the company who has also left, according to the New York Times.
 
The board of Restoration Hardware, also known as RH or Resto, was alerted to the relationship by an ex-boyfriend of the employee and were concerned about the appearance of the relationship as its initial public offering (IPO) of shares proceeded.
 
Mr. Friedman, 54, who has been divorced for seven years, is still in a relationship with the former employee. He began life working for Gap, then became president of home furnishings company Pottery Barn, and took the reins at Restoration Hardware in 2001 when it was bought by private venture capitalists, successfully transforming the company and eventually moving production from USA to China, India and Vietnam in order to cut costs. The company was started in 1980 by Stephen Gordon with a reproduction period hardware store in California, had 47 stores when it went public in 1998 and doubled that number by 2001 by which time it was losing money and needed restructuring.
 
Stephen Gordon resigned in 2005 to take over Robert Redford's Sundance catalog which, among its MDF and other less eco-friendly offerings, now sells imported reclaimed wood furniture and refurbished steel lockers.
 
Restoration Hardware now seems to be positioning itself as a retailer of upmarket home furnishings and reproduction industrial look furniture. It uses reclaimed Russian wood in a few of its products and sells, very few, genuine antiques. Rainforest campaigners have called for RH to stop using new Indonesian tropical hardwoods in its products.
 
On Resto's website, which still has him named as the CEO, Friedman quotes Steve Jobs speech to Stanford University students - 'Live every day as if it is your last. Some day you will be right.'