MODELL’S TO CLOSE ALL ITS REMAINING STORES AFTER BANKRUPTCY FILING

Modell’s Sporting Goods, the century-old family-owned sporting goods chain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey on March 11th.

As part of this action, the retailer will close its remaining 115 stores in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

Store closing liquidation sales of sporting goods equipment, footwear, team apparel and active apparel to sports fans in all stores and will continue its online sales during this process. It will team up with Tiger Capital Group to oversee the going-out-business sales starting on Friday, March 13th. Tiger had helped the company liquidate 19 stores prior to the filing.

The company’s lenders and long-standing partners will provide the company with the financial flexibility to operate the business in the near term, including the timely payment of employee wages and benefits, continued provision of customer orders and shipments, and other obligations as they come due going forward.

Modell’s has also been engaged in discussions with its financial creditors and has been exploring a recapitalization of the business through a potential sale of some or all of its assets or an equity investment. The company will continue to pursue these discussions.

“Over the past year, we evaluated several options to restructure our business to allow us to maintain our current operations,” said Mitchell Modell, chief executive officer at Modell’s. “While we achieved some success, in partnership with our landlords and vendors, it was not enough to avoid a bankruptcy filing amid an extremely challenging environment for retailers. We are extremely appreciative of the support that our lenders (JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo), vendors and landlords provided during this difficult period, engaging in extensive renegotiation efforts and allowing us to pursue every possible avenue to preserve the jobs of our loyal associates.”

Modell added: “I want to thank each and every one of our associates for their support over the years and our customers for their historic support of Modell’s. This is certainly not the outcome I wanted, and it is one of the most difficult days of my life. But I believe liquidation provides the greatest recovery for our creditors.”