This is not good news for our region that already has lost too many jobs. . . A liquidation company was the top bankruptcy bidder for Gottschalks, the 105-year-old Fresno-based department story chain. That means Gottschalks could be gone for good by July when the liquidation sales are expected to end.
That would put 5,200 people out of work, and even threaten the stability of the shopping malls where Gottschalks has the anchor stores. Click here to read The Bee's story on the bankruptcy bidding process.
The winning bidder is a consortium of liquidators that includes SB Capital Group of New York, Tiger Capital Group of Boston, Great American Group of Los Angeles and Hudson Capital Partners of Massachusetts. Closing down bankrupt stores is their specialty. They liquidated Mervyns and Circuit City.
I had hoped that Shandong Commercial Group, a Chinese company, would win the bidding process because Shandong would have kept some of the stores open. The Valley stores would have benefited from that outcome.
Gottschalks CEO James Famalette did offer some hope, telling The Bee Monday night that he hopes to continue negotiations with Shandong after the liquidation of Gottschalks. That could mean some form of Gottschalks still operating, but that has to be a longshot at this point.
Although I am not a regular shopper at Gottschalks I am sad to see it go. Sad for the employees that will be unemployed and for the malls that will just not be the same without them. I do like their products but am pretty frugal so they are a bit pricey for me on most things. I see that some retailers have gone into the building boom of opening too many stores without the customers to support it and then they go under. Growth is good if it can be supported but I believe don't fix what isn't broke and they were doing great before opening the Riverpark store. They should have shut the nasty old Manchester store and kept Fig Garden open but they didn't ask me.