In Sporting Goods Retail, There Can Only Be Two

At first glance, it might seem that national sporting goods chains should have the wind at their backs: U.S. personal income is expected to rise or hold through 2017, and researchers at Morgan Stanley cite dramatic growth in sports participation in North America, particularly among young people. According to IBIS World, in fact, the compound annual growth rate of the retail sporting goods market will […]

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Out of Fashion: The Trouble With Tweens and Teens

Apparel retailers targeting tweens and teens are taking a big hit. While we have already seen filings from the likes of Cache, Wet Seal, dELiA*s and Deb Shops, this is likely just the beginning of a larger trend. Amid dwindling sales at many (but not quite all) tween and teen-focused chains, the sector is positioned for further consolidation and additional filings.
In the heyday of the […]

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Seeking Redemption: How Gift Cards Benefit Creditors in a GOB

U.S. consumers love gift cards. According to research firm CEB Tower Group, Americans loaded approximately $124 billion onto gift cards in 2014 alone. However, it is easy to see why, in the ABL world, the estate tends to regard gift cards as nothing to celebrate. After all, from the unsecured creditors’ perspective, accepting gift cards during the course of a liquidation sale is tantamount to […]

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Finding the Sweet Spot in Retail Dispositions

Baseball players often wax poetic about the “sweet spot”: that point where the bat’s barrel meets the ball and the result is a perfectly struck shot rising gloriously away from the batter’s box. You don’t need to watch it. Flip the bat to the batboy and start your trot; you know the ball’s gone. Liquidators also speak of the sweet spot—that point in a disposition […]

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Using Social Media to Reduce Marketing Costs in Dispositions

In the past, appraisers used basic principles such as comparative sales and market trends to place values on a collective of assets. Then, liquidators entered the picture, and the Net Orderly Liquidation Value (NOLV) model moved things in a far more sophisticated direction, with the actual costs associated with selling through those assets becoming the great variable. Achieving the highest NOLV means creating financial models […]

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