Vestis Retail Group bought Sports Chalet in June 2014. Today, it announced it will knock Sports Chalet down.
As part of the planned transition, Sport Chalet began store closing sales on April 16 at all 47 store locations, and immediately shut down its ecommerce site.
Vestis, which also announced a Chapter 11 filing, also announced today that it is looking to sell its other two regional merchants, Eastern Mountain Sports and Bob’s Stores.
“After reviewing a variety of strategic alternatives, we determined that the best path forward is to separate the businesses and confront the challenges that have been hindering our overall progress,” said Mark Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of Vestis. “We are confident EMS and Bob’s will be well-positioned to thrive at the conclusion of the process.”
At the completion of the process, Vestis said the combination of EMS and Bob’s will be a stronger business partner with a renewed focus on the core successful operations in the eastern U.S., where they will continue to operate an approximately $400 million multi-channel retailer.
Vestis said when it first acquired EMS and Sport Chalet, each company faced significant operational challenges and was on the verge of liquidation. As a result, EMS and Bob’s are now delivering solid performance but have been burdened by limited financial flexibility due, in part, to the unique competitive pressures facing Sport Chalet.
In January, Vestis announced it completed the implementation of PlumSlice’s cloud-based platform to streamline the new ecommerce architecture for its three retail brands. Tom Hassell, vice president of ecommerce at Vestis, said they chose PlumSlice so its brand could deliver a world class omnichannel experience for its customers.