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Gymboree Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mark Breitbard plans to step down from the embattled retailer, which faces mounting losses and a wall of debt due next year, Bloomberg News reported today. Breitbard will take the role of chairman on Feb. 1 and leave the CEO job once a successor has been named. The executive cited the “evolving needs” of the company as the reason it should identify a new leader. The children’s apparel company, which was taken private by Bain Capital in 2010 in a deal valued at about $1.8 billion, reported a $10.9 million quarterly loss last month. It had cash on hand of $9.7 million at the end of the period. Gymboree, based in San Francisco, has a term loan of more than $760 million due in February 2018. A group of lenders has hired Rothschild Inc. to advise them as the retailer faces a potential restructuring of its $1 billion debt this year.

Troubled teen retailer Wet Seal LLC is closing all of its stores after it was unable to nail down fresh capital or a buyer, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In a letter dated Jan. 20, the retailer notified employees in its Irvine, Calif., headquarters that the office would be permanently closed and all of the workers would lose their jobs. “Unfortunately, the company was unable to obtain the necessary capital or identify a strategic partner, and was recently informed that it will receive no further financing for its operations,” Vice President and General Counsel Michelle Stocker wrote in the letter. There are 148 employees in the company’s headquarters, according to a public notice of the layoffs. Wet Seal’s website says the chain has 171 stores in 42 states. Wet Seal previously filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2015. Versa later acquired the company out of chapter 11 for $7.5 million in cash, and at the time, promised to keep at least 140 stores open.

Fitness and running retailer Luke's Locker filed for chapter 11 protection on Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News reported yesterday. Luke's Locker president Matt Lucas said that the company is putting a plan together with legal and financial experts with the goal of restoring the business "to its former strength." The company had sales last year of $34 million. Luke's will continue to operate three stores in Dallas and Fort Worth. Luke's Locker filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District in Plano. It listed both assets and liabilities of under $10 million.

Tangled up in the multi-million-dollar bankruptcy case of defunct retail giant Sports Authority is a pair of loans made to two former marketing executives, the Denver Business Journal reported yesterday. Englewood, Colo.-based Sports Authority, now known legally as TSA WD Holdings Inc., filed suit Jan. 17 against two of its former executives as part of the bankruptcy proceedings filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. One suit is against Jeff Schumacher, formerly Sports Authority's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, and Simon MacGibbon, also a former senior vice president at Sports Authority. Schumacher and MacGibbon had been with the company since 2009. Both left in 2011, long before it went bankrupt. The suit alleges that the two former executives were issued unvested shares in Slap Shot Holdings Corp., a subsidiary of Sports Authority. All Sports Authority's subsidiaries, including Slap Shot Holdings, closed along with Sports Authority.

Reeling from a shaky holiday season and slowing mall traffic, U.S. retailers are facing increasing pressure to close stores as more of their business migrates to the internet, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. More than 10 percent of U.S. retail space, or nearly 1 billion square feet, may need to be closed, converted to other uses or renegotiated for lower rent in coming years, according to data provided to Bloomberg by CoStar Group. That’s on top of about 5,000 stores that have been shuttered in the past 18 months, an estimated 50 million square feet of space, according to Clarion Partners. “There’s probably more to come,” said Tim Wang, head of investment research at Clarion, which has about $44 billion in real estate under management. Some of the industry’s biggest names, including Sears Holdings Corp. and Macy’s Inc., have said that they would shut weak locations this year. Other companies have filed for bankruptcy or are considering it, including The Limited.

BCBG Max Azria Group Inc., the glitzy fashion house founded by designer Max Azria, is looking to close stores and restructure as the company copes with a debt burden and a shift of many consumers online, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The chain plans to reduce its focus on brick-and-mortar shops, concentrating instead on licensing, e-commerce and selling through other retailers, according to Seth Lubove, a spokesman for BCBG at Sitrick & Co. The fashion brand has operated more than 570 boutiques worldwide, including more than 175 in the U.S. BCBG has “too large a physical retail footprint,” Lubove said in an e-mailed statement. “In order to remain viable, the company — like so many others in its industry — must realign its business to effectively compete in today’s shopping environment.”

The Sears Holdings Corporation, which is projected to lose more than $2 billion this year, may seem to be another morality tale for bricks-and-mortar retailers in the age of Amazon, according to a New York Times editorial today. Like other retailers, the company is scrambling to adapt to today’s internet market. The question is whether it can do so before its cash runs out and the deal-making of its hedge fund chief executive, Edward S. Lampert is not enough to create more. Sears started as a catalog business, the Amazon of a century ago, where you could buy just about anything. But in recent years, Sears has struggled. The company has lost over $9 billion in the last five years. Since 2011, it has shut more than 150 of its big Sears stores and over 350 Kmart stores, and it has just announced the closing of another 150 stores. Its revenue has fallen to a projected $25 billion in 2016, from $42.6 billion in 2011, according to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence.

Online retailing has been chipping away at mall revenue for years, but now it is starting to make a contribution as well, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Retailers are converting empty mall space into makeshift distribution centers used for package pickup and returns of goods bought online. At the same time, online merchants are opening physical stores to reach more customers, either via short-term leases in pop-up stores or long-term tenancies like Amazon.com’s upcoming move into Manhattan’s Time Warner Center. More retail centers, including those at town-center locations in smaller cities, are housing Amazon Lockers, which allow Amazon’s online customers to pick up and return packages at their convenience. Other online retailers without any physical stores are looking to provide options for their customers to drop off unwanted purchases in person in shopping centers where they can get immediate refunds.

Limited Stores LLC, owner of U.S. women's apparel chain The Limited, said today that it filed for bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Limited Stores also said it agreed to sell its intellectual property and some related assets to an affiliate of private equity firm Sycamore Partners. Limited Stores, which filed for chapter 11 protection in Delaware, said on Friday that it would close all its brick-and-mortar retail locations effective Sunday.