Creditors have raised questions about what happened in the final days before Coldwater Creek handed over the keys to its 330-store chain to liquidators in bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Something fueled an unexpected sales boom in the weeks between the April bankruptcy filing and the liquidator takeover in early May. It may be that the retailer's mature and affluent female shoppers flocked to the stores in search of post-bankruptcy bargains, bringing in more cash than Coldwater Creek expected. Or it may be, as creditors suspect, that the company's sales projections were tailored to justify bankruptcy financing that, as it turned out, wasn't needed. "It is not hyperbole to say that [Coldwater Creek] 'gave away the store,' with no legitimate business justification for doing so," creditors' lawyers said in bankruptcy court papers. That is a point the company and lender dispute as Coldwater Creek enters the last stages of its bankruptcy liquidation, which will culminate in confirmation of a chapter 11 plan that establishes the mechanism to pay creditors.
