Janet Mason 
Diesel USA, the top-rate denim and accessory logo whose 5-pocket pants dominated pop culture in the 1990s and early 2000s, filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on Tuesday. The emblem whose five-pocket pants dominated popular culture within the Nineties and early 2000s filed for financial disaster, blaming plummeting income, a botched turnaround, high-priced leases, and unwavering landlords. The unit of Italy’s Diesel SpA blamed plummeting sales, a botched turnaround, costly leases, and unwavering landlords — plus several instances of cyber fraud and theft. The Chapter eleven petition — filed with a three-year plan to certain a strategy leasing expensive shops in top-rate locations — estimates up to $a hundred million in assets and as a good deal as $50 million in debt.
Unlike some other shops that have introduced huge store closures, Diesel USA doesn’t plan to shutter. Instead, its courtroom papers defined a plan to repair the Diesel logo within the US, consisting of starting new stores and retrofitting some vintage ones to make them less expensive to operate. The US division, which listed $7.4 million in unsecured debts to exchange creditors, has 380 personnel and 28 retail shops within the US, in addition to relationships with department stores and area of expertise stores. Its financial ruin comes when several chains that survived the first retail apocalypse are back in the spotlight. Shoe store Payless, which filed for bankruptcy last month, is abandoning 2,500 shops, at the same time as mall staples Victoria’s Secret and Gap are among those planning to lessen their footprints.
Diesel is first-rate recognized for its high-end denim and became critical to the upward trend of premium denim. Designer denim had a resurgence in the early 2000s, as shoppers flocked to brands like Diesel, 7 For All Mankind, and True Religion to shell out $ hundred or more on a couple of fashion-forward denim items. Profitable until 2008, Diesel USA was recuperating from the recession while positive selections made via earlier management began to seize up with it, in step with court papers.
“Prior management started using a real property method that involved great investments in its retail stores,” chief restructuring officer Mark Samson stated in a courtroom assertion filed Tuesday. To put stores in “top rate” locations, it entered into leases, like one for its flagship on Madison Avenue in New York, at an inopportune time, just as its sales “dropped precipitously,” he said. Prior management spent $ninety million in capital costs across the commercial enterprise between 2008 and 2015 in the main brick-and-mortar shops.
Samson stated that it tried to renegotiate rentals with landlords starting extra than a year in the past, but it’s best controlled to cozy a single hire concession. On the pinnacle of that, the employer reported it became the victim in more than one incident of theft and fraud, resulting in other losses of $1.2 million over the past three years, along with net “spoofers” who sent false invoices that the agency paid.
Its turnaround plan requires it to collaborate with social media influencers, enhance its denim collection for girl clients, and relocate some shops to smaller, cost-effective places with decreased hiring. The New York-based company lists the US Customs and Border Protection enterprise in Atlanta as its biggest unsecured creditor. Diesel USA didn’t at once go back to a name for comment.
Diesel’s bankruptcy counsel didn’t right now go back to a name for the remark. The denim class has been scuffling with a fashion shift inside the US toward more great sporty looks like leggings, which the industry has dubbed “athleisure.” It’s been hard, with imports of elastic knit pants surpassing those of denim for the first time in 2017. But lately, there have been a few symptoms of desire that denim’s coming back, and jeans rival Levi Strauss & Co. recently announced a plan to go public.
