H-Town distributor claims shock

Ligne Roset national ordered the shutdown of Houston & Austin stores with a DearJohn letter

You can't shop for this Ligne Roset furniture in Houston or Austin anymore.
The Ligne Roset store closings came as a surprise.

It’s not much, but Houston-based Intex Livingspace, Ltd. has a little more information regarding the abrupt closing of the Houston and Austin Ligne Roset stores it ran as an authorized distributor of the French furniture.

Intex principal Bruce Wolfe said in a press release that he was working with Ligne Roset to restructure their business relationship and a letter he received July 16 ending that relationship caught him off guard.

"This letter came as a complete surprise and was absolutely not the alternative we had hoped for. Be that as it may, our main concern is for our valued clients. We are pleased to know that Roset has pledged to follow up and fulfill all orders placed,” Wolfe said in the release.

Antoine Roset, executive vice president of Roset USA Corporation alerted Wolfe to immediately discontinue accepting orders for its products and remove all Ligne Roset signage and materials. The sudden decision was even more confounding because Houston was one of the top-performing Ligne Roset showrooms in the country. The Houston and Austin stores were the latest in a string of Ligne Roset closings across the United States.

They both suddenly closed with the Houston store shuttering in the River Oaks Shopping Center. Intex Livingspace, Ltd. was a Roset distributor for more than 11 years in Houston and it opened the first Ligne Roset Boutique in the world in Austin in 2009. In the statement he issued Wednesday, Wolfe says that Ligne Roset and Antoine Roset ended that long-time relationship without even a phone call, sending that one-page letter instead.

The French-based Ligne Roset company sells high-end, design-forward line of household furniture, lighting, accessories and textiles. There are still 13 Ligne Roset stores open in the United States, including Dallas, which is the only remaining Texas location.

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4th of July Fun

Houston shines as a top city in Texas to celebrate 4th of July

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Houston is looking pretty patriotic this summer. H-Town has just been named the third-best city in Texas for celebrating the Fourth of July, and it lands among the top 50 in the nation for its Independence Day festivities in 2026.

Houston ranks No. 3 statewide and No. 47 nationally in WalletHub's annual report comparing the "Best & Worst Places for 4th of July Celebrations." WalletHub's experts annually ranks the 100 biggest U.S. cities across 18 metrics like affordability, the variety of celebrations on July 4th, weather favorability, safety, and more. Last year, Houston ranked 39th nationwide.

The three best cities in the U.S. for celebrating the Fourth of July in 2026 — marking the nation's monumental 250th birthday — are Las Vegas (No. 1), New York City (No. 2), and Orlando (No. 3).

Among individual categories, Houston is the 8th most affordable U.S. city to visit over the Fourth of July holiday, and it ranks 16th in the "attractions and activities" subcategory — based on a separate survey of the best and worst cities for recreation. Houston also ranked 37th overall for its abundance of July 4th celebrations. Local festivities in honor of America's 250th birthday will include spirited performances from Keith Urban and Collective Soul at the Freedom Over Texas festival.

Houston's predictably hot weather forecast for the holiday earns it a bottom-tier ranking at No. 92 overall, and the city's safety and accessibility comes in 95th place.

Elsewhere in Texas, Dallas and Fort Worth ranked as the top two best cities in the Lone Star State for celebrating America's founding, and ranked 39th and 42nd nationally. The remaining 10 Texas cities that appeared in the report ranked among the bottom 50.

This year's festivities are expected to be meteoric compared to previous years to commemorate the milestone anniversary, according to the report.

"This year, the National Retail Federation projects that U.S. households will spend a collective $9.4 billion on food for Fourth of July festivities alone," the report's author wrote.

Here's how the rest of Texas stacks up in the report:

No. 57 – El Paso
No. 63 – Lubbock
No. 74 – San Antonio
No. 80 – Arlington
No. 81 – Plano
No. 84 – Austin
No. 91 – Corpus Christi
No. 93 – Irving
No. 99 – Laredo
No. 100 – Garland

wallethub report houston holidays 4th of july