The 112-year-old company blamed its failure to change consumer habits and the pandemic, both of which “caused significant financial distress to our company,” Stein Mart CEO Hunt Hawkins said in a release on Wednesday. Like other retailers, their operations were severely affected after the pandemic forced temporary store closures in many states.
Stein Mart, a chain of discount stores, said it “does not have enough liquidity to continue operating in the normal course of business.” As a result, it permanently closes a “significant portion, if not all” of its brick-and-mortar stores, with liquidation sales immediately.
The company is also considering strategic alternatives, including the sale of its website and its intellectual property.
The submission of Chapter 11 on Wednesday was no surprise. Stein Mart had said in June that Covid-19 was causing financial distress to the company, adding in a regulation submitted that the company “had substantial doubts” that it would continue to operate for the next year.
Stein Mart started in 1908 as a small department store in Mississippi before eventually expanding to nearly 300 locations in 30 states. Each store has about 30 employees, and the company currently employs more than 8,000 people.
Stein Mart joins several other retailers that have gone bankrupt in recent months, including Tuesday Morning, JCPenney, Sur La Table and Muji. Pier 1 Imports, which filed for bankruptcy in February and closed all its stores, announced in July that it had found a buyer for its online operations and intellectual property.
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