KB Toys to Close Fayetteville Store
by February 16, 2004 12:00 am 267 views
Bankrupt retailer KB Toys Inc. plans to close its 3,536-SF store in Fayetteville’s Northwest Arkansas Mall as part of a restructuring effort, said Alice Church, manager of the mall. Church said the Pittsfield, Mass., company hadn’t given her a date for the closing, but she thought it would be within the next two or three months. The store opened in the mall in November 1996.
KB Toys said on Jan. 28 that it plans to close at least 375 stores. That will leave the 80-year-old company with about 750 stores, all of which are located in the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam. With the closings, KB Toys will cut 3,500 jobs from the current 12,000.
In addition to the Fayetteville store, KB Toys plans to close three other Arkansas stores: in McCain Mall in North Little Rock, Central Mall in Fort Smith and Hot Springs Mall in Hot Springs.
In its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, KB Toys listed $507 million in assets, $461 million in liabilities as of Jan. 3 and $116 million in outstanding unpaid bills for merchandise. The company said it had lined up $350 million in financing from Fleet Retail Group.
KB Toys is trying to recover after a “price war” during the 2003 holiday season that made it obvious that the company’s competitors — such as Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — weren’t just playing around.
KB Toys said it had received approval from a bankruptcy court to hire Ozer Group LLC, Nassi Group LLC and SB Capital Group LLC as its agents to stage store-closing inventory sales in at least 356 stores beginning Jan. 29.
KB Toys said it expects to sell up to $122.5 million of inventory in the story-closing sales.
“Closing these stores is a major step in KB Toy’s restructuring process,” CEO Michael L. Glazer said in a statement.