Dec. 19 (UPI) — Discount retail chain Big Lots, which had been attempting to keep some of its stores open while closing others, announced on Thursday that it is now closing all of its stores.
The bankrupt retailer is planning to close all 900 of its stores and sell off its inventory, the company said.
A deal for Columbus, Ohio-based Big Lots to sell its assets to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management fell through, the company said. And while it continues to look for alternatives, it now plans to close all of its locations and is planning “going out of business” sales at all of them.
“We all have worked extremely hard and have taken every step to complete a going concern sale,” Big Lots CEO Bruce Thorn said in a statement. “While we remain hopeful that we can close an alternative going-concern transaction, in order to protect the value of the Big Lots estate, we have made the difficult decision” to close all stores.
Big Lots, often the anchor store in low-end strip malls, sells furniture, lawn and garden, apparel, health and beauty, and other consumer goods.
Big Lots has called itself a place that delivers “bargains to brag about on everything for the home, including furniture, décor, pantry and more.”
The store filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September, and announced that it was trying to arrange the deal with Nexus. The filing came after Big Lots announced it was closing a third of its stores in a cost-cutting move.
“Though the majority of our store locations are profitable, we intend to move forward with a more focused footprint,” Bruce Thorn, the retailer’s president and CEO, said in a statement at the time of the store closures.
The closures reflect the national trend of retailers closing brick and mortar locations amid challenging economic conditions.
The consumer group Coresight has reported more than 7,300 store closings this year, led by Family Dollar, with 718, followed by CVS, with 586, and Big Lots, with 580.
That compares with 4,627 store closings across the retail industry by this time last year, Coresight said.