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Pipeline Foods, LLC on Friday said that it and certain subsidiaries and affiliates have filed voluntary petitions for chapter 11 relief in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, according to a press release. The company will be filing customary motions with the bankruptcy court that will authorize, upon court approval, the company's ability to operate within a cash collateral budget, including, among other things, the payment of employee wages and benefits without interruption and the use of cash collateral. The company will continue its pre-filing efforts to evaluate any and all strategic alternatives, including a sale of all or substantially all of the assets of its businesses in an effort to maximize value and recovery for all creditors. In parallel with this process, the company expects to request authority to sell its grain inventory outside of the ordinary course at market prices in an effort to facilitate the company's use of cash collateral. The first hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.

Though Jamie Salter started with lesser-known consumer names, he spent much of the last decade acquiring ailing but widely recognized brands like Barneys New York, Sports Illustrated and Brooks Brothers. Now, he’ll do so in the public eye as Authentic filed paperwork for an initial public offering this week, Bloomberg News reported. “There is $13 trillion of branded commerce in our sights,” Salter wrote to prospective investors in a regulatory filing. That’s the retail value he envisions for potential merchandise in Authentic’s brand portfolio — not the licensing fees that now make up the bulk of revenues. It’s a measure of Salter’s confidence in growing global affluence, brand extensions and acquisitions. Authentic’s filing lists only a placeholder amount of $100 million, but Bloomberg has reported that the IPO could value the company around $10 billion. Net income grew fourfold to $225 million last year from $56 million in 2016, while revenue jumped to $489 million from $165 million.

Nordstrom, one of many national retailers battered by the pandemic, has added a new arrow to its quiver as it fights an uphill battle to get customers, particularly young ones, back: It is teaming up with Asos, the online fashion behemoth, the New York Times reported. Nordstrom will announce today that it is buying a minority stake in the Asos unit that owns Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT, which Asos acquired out of bankruptcy this year. Nordstrom will also start a partnership with Asos that will bring the retailer’s brands into department stores and allow Asos shoppers to pick up and return products at Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Nordstrom has been trying to shed its association with other mall-based department stores. It has been shrinking its full-price store locations while rapidly expanding its off-price Nordstrom Rack chain, whose stores are often in strip malls. Nordstrom has also been making investments to better link its digital operations with its physical stores, through initiatives like establishing locations where customers can pick up and return online purchases. The deal secures a physical foothold for Asos in North America, and it will help Nordstrom improve its assortment and services for millennials and a growing cohort of Generation Z shoppers, said Peter Nordstrom, the president of the namesake chain and its chief brand officer.

The COVID-19 crisis, which prompted a wave of retail bankruptcies and nationwide shutdowns, swallowed a whole season’s worth of unsold goods, Bloomberg News reported. That has opened the door for Hilco and Gordon to run sales -- not for the retailers that usually hire them, but under their own nameplates. Shopper’s Find, as the stores are called, are sourcing directly from manufacturers or wholesalers stuck with piles of last season’s fashion and other extra goods. “As more and more stores are closing, there are fewer outlets for inventory,” said Ian Fredericks, the head of Hilco Global’s retail group. When Hilco and Gordon Brothers run their mainstay liquidations, they step in to manage and oversee stores’ operations. That involves not just tasks like displaying merchandise and running the cash register, but adding inventory from vendors to round out what’s available -- bringing in socks, for example, if you are selling shoes, Fredericks said in an interview. Those contacts have proved useful for both sides now that manufacturers need to offload mountains of stuff and the liquidators have found no shortage of cheap rents for spaces to run a new type of cut-rate sale.

The owner of downtrodden retail brands including JCPenney and Forever 21 plans to sell shares to the public, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wall Street Journal reported. Authentic Brands Group Inc. holds the license to more than 30 brands, including Sports Illustrated and Marilyn Monroe, as well as other well known retail names such as Brooks Brothers, Nine West and Eddie Bauer. The company gets most of its revenue from licensing fees. It has partnered with mall owner Simon Property Group Inc. on the acquisition of some brands, including Aéropostale, Forever 21 and Penney, making it one of the bigger operators of physical stores at a time when more shopping is shifting online. Authentic Brands had net income of $225 million in 2020 on total revenue of $489 million, according to the SEC filing.

Shares in so-called meme stocks with a following among retail investors lost ground on Wednesday, with AMC Entertainment shares down 8.1%, on track for their fourth straight day of declines, and GameStop Corp. falling 4.9%, Reuters reported. AMC, which fell almost 12% in the previous three sessions, hit a record high of $72.62 in early June as members of social media platforms including Twitter and Reddit's WallStreetBets urged each other to buy the stock. The cinema operator, which on Tuesday scrapped a shareholder approval request for an increase in the number of shares outstanding, was trading at $45.91 after breaching its 30-day moving average. AMC was still up about 2254% year-to-date but well below its 3624% peak gain. Shares in video game retailer GameStop traded at $189.79, compared with its Jan. 28 record of $483 when investors betting against the stock were forced to buy it to cover their bets as retail investors piled in. GameStop shares have steadily declined since it announced quarterly results and flagged upcoming share sales in early June. It was last up 906% for the year-so-far compared with a roughly 2464% peak gain. "The momentum is fading and the enthusiasm is fading," said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford, Conn. "They've been pushed well beyond the appropriate fundamental valuation levels so we're starting to see some air come out."

Bankrupt mall owner Washington Prime Group Inc. is drawing interest from real estate investment trust RPT Realty Inc. after soliciting purchase bids as part of its “dual path” bankruptcy process, Bloomberg News reported. RPT Realty, which owns about 50 shopping centers across the U.S., is assessing Washington Prime’s properties as part of the mall owner’s chapter 11 restructuring, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private negotiations. Washington Prime said at the time of its bankruptcy filing June 14 that it was already “in discussions with several potentially interested parties,” regarding a sale. The company said that it was exploring bids even after filing a restructuring plan to the bankruptcy court that would see it hand ownership shares to its unpaid creditors in a debt-for-equity swap. Its shares were trading around $2.42 Tuesday morning, down from around $5.00 ahead of the filing. Its plan provides a potential recovery of about 83 cents for common share holders.

U.S. consumer confidence rose for a fifth month in June to the highest level since the pandemic began last year as households responded to increased vaccinations and the further re-opening of businesses, the Associated Press reported. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index increased to 127.3 in June, up from a May reading of 120.0. The June increase reflected an improvement in consumers’ assessment of current conditions. Consumer sentiment is expected to keep rising in coming months which will provide more support for consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of economic activity. Consumers’ appraisal of current business conditions increased with 24.5% viewing conditions as good, up from 19.9% in May. Consumers’ assessment of the labor market was also up with 54.4% of consumers saying jobs were plentiful, up from 48.5% in May while 10.9% of consumers saw jobs as hard to get, down from 11.6% in May.

Suppliers to Walmart, Target, Amazon.com and other major retailers told Reuters they are placing holiday orders for Chinese-made merchandise weeks earlier this year, as a global shipping backlog threatens to leave many gift buyers empty-handed this Christmas shopping season. Reuters surveyed nearly a dozen suppliers and retailers of everything from toys to computer equipment in the United States and Europe. All expect weeks-long delays in holiday inventory due to shipping bottlenecks, including a global container shortage and the recent COVID-related closure of the southern Chinese port of Yantian, which serves manufacturers near Shenzhen. The risk for retailers is a rash of out-of-stock items just as shoppers are ready to open their wallets to splurge on toys, clothing and other merchandise. "It's going to be a major, major mess," said Isaac Larian, chief executive of Los Angeles-based MGA Entertainment Inc, which sells LOL Surprise, Bratz, Little Tikes and other toy brands to Amazon, Walmart and Target. His company has toys stuck in hundreds of containers at the Yantian port. If he can't get enough inventory for his retail clients, "it's going to hurt the Christmas sales big time," Larian said. The shipping logjams are due to more than just the backlog in Yantian, which is considered Amazon's No. 1 Chinese seaport, accounting for 32.4% of shipments handled by the e-commerce company in the three months to May 31, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence's trade data firm Panjiva. While Yantian port reopened on June 24, a shortage of containers was still constraining full activity, globally cargo ships are overbooked, containers are stranded in the wrong places, and ports are congested. Products are piling up on factory floors, in warehouse parking lots, on seaport docks and at rail yards — threatening more backups than last year's holiday "shipageddon," when many items arrived after Christmas.

The owner of former Sears stores is looking to sell as many as 50 properties as it tries to generate cash and focus on the development of other sites it owns, Bloomberg News reported. Seritage Growth Properties, a real estate investment trust that emerged from the Sears bankruptcy, wants to unload 40 to 50 sites that “were less interesting in terms of uses of our capital,” according to Chief Executive Officer Andrea Olshan. “I’ve been very clear what I want to own and what I don’t think is strategic for us to own,” Olshan said. Sears Holding Corp. filed for bankruptcy in 2018, closed stores and terminated the last of its leases in March with Seritage, which owns 154 sites and has a stake in another 25. The company’s debt load is roughly double its market value of about $800 million. A $1.6 billion loan from Berkshire Hathaway Inc. matures in 2023. Seritage had a net loss of $92 million in the 12 months through March. The stock plunged more than 60% in 2020 as the pandemic battered real estate. The shares have rebounded a bit this year, gaining 28% to close Wednesday at $18.76. The stock was little changed on Thursday.