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They're the undertakers of the retail business, charged with giving stores a graceful exit from this earth (at 60% off!). And when they tell strangers what they do for a living, it's sometimes hard to do it with great gusto. "'Liquidator' sure has a negative connotation, doesn't it?" admits Paul Erickson, CFO of the Great American Group, one of the largest liquidation firms in the country. The wife of Jim Schaye, CEO of Hudson Capital Partners, another major liquidator, didn't want her husband to broadcast his career when they first met. "She thought people would think...
...have all shut down. KB Toys, the second largest toy retailer behind Toys R' Us, and Boot Town, a Western clothes outfitter, are running liquidations now, along with Circuit City. Look for more to come. Schaye says Hudson Capital's revenues increased tenfold in 2008. According to Erickson, the Great American Group saw a 300% revenue jump in 2008. He predicts similar growth for the first three months of this year. "The numbers are higher than we ever could have imagined," Erickson says...
...liquidation firms certainly do. In many deals, they pay the bankrupt company for access to the merchandise, and only profit if they sell enough stuff. These "guarantee" deals carry lots of risk. Take Circuit City. The four liquidation companies, the Great American Group, SB Capital Group, Tiger Capital Group and Hudson Capital Partners, together paid some $800 million for Circuit City's merchandise, which is worth around $1.7 billion at retail. The firms must also pay the company's expenses - payroll, rent and store operating costs - for the duration of the liquidation, which will likely take eight weeks. Here, Circuit...
Liquidators insist they're not the bad guys, and can get quite defensive about their profession. "Someone who is inexperienced will say 'the liquidators are taking over the company, and therefore we are going out of business," says Harvey Yellen, chairman of the Great American Group. "You're going out of business because the company ran into bleak times, or was run wrong. We get hired to fix the problem. We're not the cause." Liquidators need to motivate a sales force that's about to lose their jobs. That's no easy task. "It's a depressed atmosphere," says...
...firms are running against the clock. They can't drop the discounts forever, and the longer the sale lasts, the more expenses it has to pay. How long will they let the $1,300 plasma TVs sit at 10% off? They won't tell the customer, of course. The Great American Group wants you to buy, now, before it's forced to move the discount down to 20%. The customer also has to make some bets. For example, Erickson, the Great American CFO, worked on the liquidation for the Montgomery Ward department stores a few years back. He gave himself...