Another retailer was killed by the pandemic. On September 9th, Groupe Dynamite, owners of the Dynamite and Garage chain filed for creditors protection and will be filing for Chapter 15 Bankruptcy in the US. It's unknown right now how many stores are going to close, but I can confirm that the one in the blog's coverage area already closed with signage intact. They operate 400 stores under both banners.
As you might know already, Lowe’s sold their Canadian division to a private equity company, Sycamore Partners, earlier this year. Rona then announced that the Lowe's stores will be gradually re-branded as Rona+. These conversions started at the end of July with 10 stores in Ontario. So far all they did was replace all the Lowe’s logos with Rona+ logos with the Lowe's decor remaining intact. What’s interesting about Rona+ is that some Lowe’s stores were converted from larger Rona stores. So in a way, this will go full circle at some locations. Hopefully this will be successful for Rona. Until the next post (hopefully it won’t be another 2 years), Dom
A Chapter 15 bankruptcy filing was a new one for me, lol. Jokes aside though, this is sad to hear, as always. So many companies have been adversely affected by this pandemic: not only the virus threat itself, but also all the shutdowns and restrictions that seemingly arbitrarily choose what is "essential" and what is not...
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of a chapter 15 too. According to Wikipedia, it has to do with international cases. I agree, this pandemic and shutdown impacted a lot of industries, especially retail.
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