News broke over the weekend that the auction of Joann’s assets revealed the winning bidder to be an LLC established by GA Group, which planned to liquidate and close all stores. The bankruptcy court had a hearing on the sale on Feb. 26 and determined that the sale is valid and the company has “articulated good and sufficient business reasons” for the court to allow the buyer to conduct going out of business sales and store closures.
To recap quickly, Joann filed for bankruptcy in January for the second time in a year, and at that time the company had a bid to purchase from Gordon Brothers, which planned to close all the stores. Ahead of the auction, Joann received permission from the court to begin closing about 500 of its 800 stores in the hope that would make the remaining assets more attractive to a buyer that would choose to keep the stores open. That didn’t happen, though a higher bid did come in from GA Joann Retail Partnership LLC, a company formed by GA Group for the purposes of taking over and closing down Joann.
The court gave GA Joann Retail Partnership permission to sell all merchandise from store locations, distribution centers and wholesale channels, as well as the furniture, fixtures and other equipment from the stores and warehouses.
In a press release, Joann said:
Following a comprehensive sale process and auction, GA Group together with the Prepetition Term Loan Agent, has been selected as the winning bidder to acquire substantially all of JOANN’s assets. In connection with this agreement, subject to Bankruptcy Court approval of the transaction, the winning bidders plan to begin winding down the Company’s operations and conduct going-out-of-business sales at all store locations.
JOANN leadership, our Board, advisors and legal partners made every possible effort to pursue a more favorable outcome that would keep the company in business. We are committed to working constructively with the winning bidder to ensure an orderly wind-down of operations that minimizes the impact on all our stakeholders. We deeply appreciate our dedicated Team Members, our customers and communities across the nation for their unwavering support for more than 80 years.
Court documents state that at stores where going out of business sales had already started, all sales will be final and returns will no longer be accepted as of March 2, 2025. For other stores returns and gift cards will still be accepted for 14 after the closing of the sale. The buyer is authorized to terminate any employees at any time during the closing period, given seven days’ notice unless they are fired for cause.
As far as I could tell there’s no timeline for when the stores would close, but previous statements on the original set of stores said they would be closed by the end of May if not sooner. In customer FAQs on the Joann Restructuring website, the company says dates for store closures or changes to the website or app “will be communicated as soon as possible, and we expect it will take a number of weeks to complete our final sales.”
I asked the company what will happen to CreativeBug, the online learning platform Joann purchased in 2017, but I haven’t gotten a response. I’ll let you know when I hear anything.
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