Frederick’s of Hollywood, a purveyor of racy women’s lingerie for almost seven decades, is reportedly shedding one-third of its 93 stores.
The Los Angeles-based retailer has hired liquidators the Great American Group to help wind down operations for at least 31 of its stores, which will close in the coming months, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Bill Soncini, Frederick’s COO, told WSJ that the number of store closings could increase slightly. The company will shutter its flagship store in Hollywood in April.
“We’re in the process of re-engineering the whole business,” Soncini told WSJ. “Landlords have been very, very agreeable of letting us out of some very unprofitable locations…. These stores should have been closed years ago.”
Buyers led by the Harbinger Group took the retailer private in 2013 as part of a deal that valued Frederick’s at roughly $11 million. Even then, the company had been struggling to compete with top-selling lingerie brands such as Victoria’s Secret, which led to a string of quarterly losses. WSJ notes that the going-private deal did not work out all that well for Harbinger, which recently said it wrote off more than $60 million on the transaction.
Now, Frederick’s is attempting to avoid its second bankruptcy in less than two decades. The company filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2000. It emerged from bankruptcy three years later and went public in 2006. As part of its exit from bankruptcy, Frederick’s outlined a turnaround plan that included revamping its website and opening or remodeling more than 20 stores.
