TCG, an American women's clothing company, files for bankruptcy protection

Although many retailers successfully transformed into e-commerce during the epidemic and ushered in new opportunities for development, many once-glorious physical retailers failed to survive and declared bankruptcy in the spring of 2021, including the clothing retail industry, which was hit hard during the epidemic.

A report from Deloitte shows that clothing and accessories stores as a whole lost 89% between February and April 2020. McKinsey Consulting also found that up to 75% of clothing retailers may find their financial situation unsustainable due to losses caused by the epidemic. The Collected Group may have become a "tear of the times."

According to foreign media reports, The Collected Group (TCG), a once popular American women's fashion company, saw its retail revenue plummet 85% in 2020, its wholesale revenue fell 70%, and its debt exceeded US$183 million. It had filed for bankruptcy protection with the court on April 5 this year.

Looking back at history, The Collected Group has also had its moments of glory.

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Los Angeles and New York, the group is one of the world's top three clothing design companies and clothing retailers and wholesalers. At its peak, it had 33 stores of different brands, including the contemporary women's fashion brand Joie, the silk clothing brand Equipment and the denim clothing brand Current/Elliott . These brands are the clothing choice of many celebrities and social influencers including Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Jessica Parker and Eva Longoria.

However, A-list corporate fame and influencers could not save the company from its operational and financial woes.

In 2018, TCG underwent a restructuring and updated its business management system before that. Without perfecting key warehouse and logistics links , TCG operated "stumblingly". After profits and sales declined, TCG raised funds to start building its e-commerce and wholesale sales channels , which improved the company's profitability.

However, the outbreak of the epidemic soon deprived TCG of the opportunity to "recreate glory".

With the outbreak of the epidemic, TCG quickly closed its offline store operations, but the customer flow of TCG stores did not improve much after reopening.

Now facing bankruptcy, TCG plans to close all offline stores and sell its products through the company's hundreds of wholesale channels, including 305 domestic channels in the United States and 272 overseas channels. These channels include department stores, online retailers and clothing rental companies such as Bloomingdale's, Harvey Nichols and Neiman Marcus.

Fellow brand TCG suffers the same fate as American clothing brand DSW and children's clothing brand The Children's Place , both of which decided to close stores in March this year to reduce losses.

DSW 's sales fell 34% during the epidemic, and it plans to close 65 of its 501 offline stores in 44 states in the United States and lay off 1,080 employees. The Children's Place 's sales fell 7.8% last year , and it has closed 178 offline stores in 2020.

The unfortunate bankruptcy of TCGs is not only a necessity under the background of the times, but also the intensification and manifestation of their own internal contradictions.

I hope that sellers can also conduct self-examination while the epidemic has not yet subsided, improve and optimize the internal management of their own stores, grasp their own capital turnover chain, and at the same time not forget to be consumer-centric and provide customers with high-quality products and services. Only in this way can they smoothly pass one unexpected test after another in life and move towards the other side of victory!

The Collected Group; clothing retail