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 […]

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 […]

Explosions and firefights are part and parcel of today’s videogames, but a different sort of “creative destruction” is at play within the industry itself. After decades in which video games were available mostly on physical media like discs and cartridges, the arrival of trends such as mobile gaming, digital downloading and cloud computing promises to change the way people buy and play video games in […]

Mall-based teen apparel retailers have struggled over the past few years amid growing competition from lower-priced “fast-fash¬ion” chains such as H&M and Forever 21, as well as the likes of off-price retailer TJ Maxx and Internet players ranging from Amazon to Zappos.

But retail CEOs have more to worry about. They are particularly concerned about broader trends at play in teen apparel retailing, including high unemploy¬ment […]

Just as growing numbers of traditional retailers have learned to augment their core brick-and-mortar assets by building well-trafficked e-commerce sites, liquidation firms serving the ABL industry are also mastering the nuances of leveraging the Internet as an effective sales channel. Those in our industry have considerable reason to do so. After all, more e-tailers are now seeking ABL loans, and even liquidations of purely brickand-mortar […]

To get a feel for how excited some Canadians are about the prospect of foreign brands entering the country, take a look at the columns of Marina Strauss in The Globe and Mail newspaper. The Toronto-based retail reporter maintains a vigilant watch for the latest scuttlebutt about the Canadian “invasion plans” of chains such as Target, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Lowe’s. Likewise, the press releases and […]

In the topsy-turvy period that followed the financial meltdown of 2008, the U.S. economy weathered the liquidation of thousands of companies, including big-name retailers such as Circuit City, Goody’s, Mervyn’s, Gottschalks, and Ritz Camera, to name a few. But the change in market conditions meant that a large number of companies needed updated appraisals right away. The resulting backlog forced the secured lending community to […]

The rapidly changing retail food sector shows no signs of slowing down. But while the overall growth in this space is noteworthy, it is arguably more interesting to consider where this growth is occurring: Mass merchants such as Walmart, Target, Costco and even dollar stores and drugstores continue to seize market share from traditional food retailers. Meanwhile, the foodie and healthy-living trends have been driving […]