That’s All She Wrote: S&K Closes Doors Forever

Following the demise of Circuit City, the book has closed on yet another national retailer based in Short Pump. S&K Famous Brands has shuttered its Short Pump location, next to the headquarters on West Broad Street at Interstate 64. Operations have wound down at the chain’s brick and mortar stores across the country, but some […]

August 25, 2009; 12:35 PM • by Trevor Dickerson

Following the demise of Circuit City, the book has closed on yet another national retailer based in Short Pump. S&K Famous Brands has shuttered its Short Pump location, next to the headquarters on West Broad Street at Interstate 64. Operations have wound down at the chain’s brick and mortar stores across the country, but some former employees are keeping operations going online.

The S&K website now redirects to a new company, Direct Menswear. The site states that the company is based in Richmond and was founded earlier this year. Although the company is not directly connected to S&K, several former employees started the new venture and seem to have bought up much of the remaining inventory.

S&K filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in February, listing assets at the time of $41,440,100 and debts of $35,499,000. They used the filing to try and get out of leases of under-performing stores in their portfolio, including one at Virginia Center Commons. The company also intended to break contracts with local marketing firms, including $1.32 million with the advertising firm Right Minds and $402,000 with the media buying firm Kinton & Stallings.

In another attempt at raising cash, the company also sold its Short Pump headquarters on Broad at I-64. TGM Realty Investors, a subsidiary of local company Thalhimer Commercial Real Estate, purchased the corporate offices, attached 110,000 square foot warehouse and adjacent S&K retail store for $5.6 million.

Financed in part by the sale of the headquarters, S&K paid off a $13 million line of credit given to them by the US bankruptcy court in downtown Richmond as part of their filing. Sources familiar with the company say S&K only used around $7 million of the credit line to reorganize its operations.

S&K was started in Richmond in 1967 by Abe Kaminsky and Hip Siegel. They intended to offer a quality product with excellent service at a reasonable price, according to the filing. The company had 100 stores in 1990 and 200 stores in 1997. It’s unclear exactly when the business model started failing, but in 2005, the company was delisted from NASDAQ.

We’ll have a followup on this story later this week.

August 25, 2009 12:35 PM 0