Art Van is out of money and is liquidating and closing all stores

[Deleted User 24]

MW, what did/do you think of the Crain's take?

https://www.crainsdetroit.com/retail/ho ... ouse-afire

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Passing through Gaylord I pass an Art Van... tonight the sign read “Locally Owned”. That message flashed across with 3 different colored backgrounds along with the time and temp. Are the franchises still going to roll along after the corporate stores die? Clearly this person doesn’t plan on closing and wants people to know it.

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The fate of the franchised stores will be up to each individual franchisee.

They may or may not be able to still use the "Art Van" name. The corporate support structure is completely gone. They are 100% on their own now.

Interesting... the fate of that one will bear some watching... it looks fairly new...

[Deleted User 143]

The fate of the franchised stores will be up to each individual franchisee.

They may or may not be able to still use the "Art Van" name. The corporate support structure is completely gone. They are 100% on their own now.

In NW Ohio, at least two of the franchisees are reverting to their pre-Art Van names (Samsen Furniture in Gibsonburg, Rettig Furniture in Findlay).

[SolidGoldDancers]

See, not a vulture capital situation at all. Far from it. Thomas H. Lee lost its ass. They are a subordinated creditor at best and a common equity holder at worst. Their entire investment is "out of the money." Granted, we don't know how much of the $550 million purchase price was funded with their money versus senior secured loan proceeds from Wells Fargo.

It is classic private equity playbook. Come in, slash costs, convert anything to cash that can be sold and if the business survives, even better!

From the Crain's article:

At closing in 2017, Thomas H. Lee entered into a series of sale-leaseback deals on Art Van's real estate, including its 1.06 million-square-foot headquarters in Warren and 20 locations in Michigan, with a variety of buyers after closing the deal to buy Art Van.

Think about that for a moment. They took an asset, sold it, and then required Art Van to lease what it previously owned. A surge of cash at the sale, a steady flow of cash out of Art Van afterwards. I bet some of the buyers, have ties to the private equity firm.

"Private equity saw value outside the business in the real estate owned by Art Van, who owned a number of their stores," O'Keefe said. "They entered into a massive sale-leaseback to liquidate the value of the real estate and recover a big part of their initial investment."

Lost their ass, eh? No, they covered it first and foremost.

I don't think this is a bust-out similar to what has been happening to Sears. The private equity firm screwed up, brought in people who had no idea what they were doing (executives at other failed businesses) and the people who get to pay are the workers and the community. But lets not lose any tears over their alleged lost capital. Part of the reason they failed is they drained cash and assets to cover their bet. When the bad decisions hit home with the debt, the company failed.

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Crain's Chicago Business has some interesting tidbits in its article that I've not seen reported elsewhere:
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/retail/ ... bankruptcy

Art Van's late founder, Art Van Elslander, sold the company to a Boston-based private equity firm, Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, three years ago in an estimated $550 million deal.

As the company sought to turn things around, it fired its then-CEO and among other leadership changes, brought in former President Gary Van Elslander as chairman of its board[/b] to rekindle the relationship between Art Van's founding family and employees and customers.

...Despite the efforts, Art Van ended 2019 in the red, seeing continued revenue and profit losses for the fourth year in a row.

In other words, the bleeding started BEFORE the sale.

Also, isn't it interesting that most if not all of Detroit's mainstream media outlets failed to mention the fact that Gary Van Elslander was brought back into the fold a while ago and was Chairman of the Board at the very end?

The final death knell came in January when Art Van's financial partners including credit card processing companies Bank of America Merchant Services and PNC Merchant Services — which provide consumer credit and were critical to Art Van's ability to accept credit cards in stores and online for customer purchases — demanded approximately $33 million in collateral.

Damn. That's rather remarkable, for all the wrong reasons.

Art Van subsequently talked with at least 31 potential buyers and investors to recapitalize or sell all or parts of the business. The most promising investment that emerged was from a consortium of investors that included a new-money investment from Thomas H. Lee, the Van Elslander family and three suppliers to the Art Van business. Art Van's five largest lessors also agreed to reduce rent obligations and allow Art Van to close certain underperforming locations, Ladd said in the filing.

However, due to a number of factors, including the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on investor confidence, the consortium was unable to secure needed investment in late February and last week some master lessors pulled out of the deal.

Why can the CHICAGO media unearth all of these details, yet the DETROIT media is uncapable of doing so? Good to see real journalism still thrives in the Windy City. Too bad we cannot say the same of Detroit.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the above described negotiations.

Mostly investment I think... leg work costs money... rip and read is cheap...

[Mega Hertz]

We have a Pure Sleep store on the corner of Grand River and Old US 23. It's not near an Art Van, but has the typical "everything must go" stickers in the window. What does this mean for them? They're gone too?

[ADD in TC]

I heard the company that took over a number of Art Van stores are now closing locations.What is that all about?I recently read that home furniture is a hot commodity now due to Covid.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

Lots of unhappy customers. The quality of the furniture not left over from Art Van is poor. Have had this confirmed by two friends.

[MasterB]

Art Van became Love Furniture in Kazoo and Bob's also build a store as well.