Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.
Because the company then had to pay off those extreme loans, they were forced to sell off their assets and property, which they leased back from the very private equity firms that now owned them.
The same thing happened more recently with Red Lobster and JoAnn Fabrics.
I think the real reason they died is because they had high markups and hence, nobody could afford to shop there. The one we had in our next town over was very expensive and even though it was cool, we could never go there because it was expensive. With the high markup comes the low volume, and hence debt. The high markup only works with the most popular of a category, but it still kills your brand if it’s anything more than premium price for premium products. Wallmart and other box stores, and eventually amazon also killed it because it’s a crowded market. Cool concept for a store though. Reminds me of the time before national and international corporatism when you could have little mom and pop stores like that, with hand picked toys that were really cool.
This is a well studied case. It was private equity that killed them.
I don’t know anything about them tbh.
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