Linens 'N Things Becomes Liquidation 'N Things

(MoneyWatch)  Having failed to find a buyer, Linens 'N Things will begin "a straight going-out-of-business liquidation sale" as early as Thursday, according to James Schaye, CEO of Hudson Capital Partners, one of the companies that bid earlier this year to buy the retailer's assets.

The endgame for the specialty retailer of household items has been a story of changes in direction. Linens 'N Things filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May and closed 120 poor-performing stores of 589 over the summer.

Linens 'N Things was done in by a combination of scared consumers, useless merchandise, slow housing sales, higher prices for Chinese goods and freight, and the suffocating weight of $650 million in debt. We called it May 5 in a piece titled, "Not Enough Linens, Too Many Things."
The Onion even weighed in on the company, back in July, renaming it "Linens 'N S--t."

In July, according to the Wall Street Journal, Linens 'N Things said business had improved and reduced the number of stores it planned to close to 57 from 87. Two weeks later, it added 28 of those stores back onto the closure list.

In August Linens filed a reorganization plan with the bankruptcy court, but then scheduled an auction of its assets for today (Oct. 14) and accepted a preliminary stalking-horse bid from a consortium that offered $475 million.

That auction was cancelled late Monday when no other bidders surfaced.


Linens N Things photo by Christa Connelly, via Flickr and CC 2.0