ORLANDO, Fla. – Major brick and mortar retailers across the U.S. are struggling.
The reasons range from the rise of online shopping and crushing debt loads to shifting consumer habits. Add higher borrowing costs and, of course, the COVID‑19 pandemic, and suddenly the picture comes into focus: for some stores, just keeping the lights on is harder than ever.
Over the past decade, dozens of household-name retailers have either collapsed entirely or retreated into a fraction of their former selves. Some liquidated. Others tried – and sometimes failed – to reorganize in bankruptcy.
Do any of these names sound familiar?
- 2016
- Sports Authority
- 2017
- HHGregg
- The Limited
- Wet Seal
- 2018
- The Bon-Ton
- Toys “R” Us
- 2019
- Dressbarn
- Gymboree (and Crazy 8)
- Henri Bendel
- Payless ShoeSource
- 2020
- Barneys New York
- Modell’s Sporting Goods
- Pier One
- Stein Mart
- 2021
- Fry’s Electronics
- Lord & Taylor
- 2023
- Tuesday Morning
- 2025
- JOANN
That roll call is just a sample of chains that either liquidated or shrank to a shadow of their former selves. For all practical purposes, they’re gone.
As for major stores that have filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection (but still survived), that list is a bit shorter:
- 2016
- Aéropostale
- 2020:
- Belk
- JCPenney
- J.Crew Group
- 2023
- Bed Bath & Beyond (re-emerged online as Bed Bath & Beyond Home)
- 2024
- Express
- 2025
- Claire’s
Now, in 2026, another retail giant joins that second list. Saks Global is the umbrella company that owns Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks OFF 5TH, Bergdorf Goodman, Last Call, Horchow and the newly acquired Neiman Marcus. The company filed for Chapter 11 on Jan. 13, 2026.
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So, what links a toy store, a fabric chain, a luxury icon and a big‑box discounter? In a word: debt. This is not a fluke; it’s a pattern, and the devil is in the details. Many of these retailers were “financially engineered” long before they were “re-imagined” and loaded with billions in loans and bonds that had to be paid, whether shoppers showed up or not. In case after case, the shoppers did not show up.
In 2005, Toys “R” Us was bought by Bain Capital, KKR and Vornado and saddled with about $5 billion worth of debt and about $400 million in interest payments each year. The company shut down its stores for good in 2018.
Payless filed for Chapter 11 twice in two years even after it halved its $800 million pile of debt down to $400 million. That debt came from a private-equity buyout in 2012.
Bon-Ton folded in 2018 after years of borrowing to buy competitors, expand and stay afloat. Its last annual profit was in 2010; by early 2018, it had over $1 billion in debt and had just missed a $14 million interest payment. By April of 2018, the brand was kaput.
Now that same script is playing out at the very top of the market: in luxury. Luxury retailers are supposed to be insulated from downturns, but the Saks Global filing suggests that leverage, not taste, is the real vulnerability.
American shopping habits have shifted much quicker than balance sheets. E-commerce, led by Amazon, has become a juggernaut in market share. Malls, once the beating heart of suburban retail, have lost their foot traffic. The middle‑class customers that department stores depend on have been squeezed by flat wages and rising costs. Warehouse clubs and social media shopping are getting their licks in too.
Don’t believe it? When was the last time you got up before dawn on Black Friday to wait in line for a doorbuster deal?
And what happens when a store closes a physical location? An unforeseen consequence: store closures “send a negative signal about the brand to consumers, who may start to transfer their loyalties to competitors that appear to be doing better.”
If you are Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s, right now, you’re the “doing better.”
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The beginning of the end of Saks Global would thin the herd from three national luxury retailers down to just two. As a result, smaller regional luxury players could benefit – boutiques like eugenie in Detroit, Stanley Korshak in Dallas, Tootsies in Houston, and Mayors across South Florida.
Saks Global stumbled into 2026 with billions in funded debt thanks to its $2.7 billion acquisition in 2024 of Neiman Marcus (of which $2.2 billion was borrowed). The deal was supposed to create “a luxury retail powerhouse.” CNBC instead labeled it “a recipe for disaster.”
The Saks/Neiman deal pushed the parent company’s total obligations well past the comfort zone – more than enough to cripple cash flow when luxury spending softened. By the time Saks Global skipped on interest payments of more than $100 million in late 2025, the question was no longer if it would end up in bankruptcy court but when.
Vendors felt it first. Court filings show Saks Global owing hundreds of millions of dollars to some of the biggest names in fashion – brands that don’t like waiting to be paid.
Among them: Oscar de la Renta, Altuzarra, Kering (the owner of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga), and LVMH (owner of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Fendi, and over 70 other high-retail brands). Saks owes Chanel $136 million, Kering $60 million, and LVMH $26 million.
And according to the New York Times, Chanel has pulled out of seven stores while Hilldun, a company that now owns some unpaid invoices from Saks Global, told vendors to stop shipping goods to the troubled company. All in, court filings reveal Saks Global owes its top 30 vendors about $712 million and all creditors about $3.4 billion.
Missed and stretched payments strained relationships with suppliers. Landlords, meanwhile, were watching another potential anchor tenant wobble, with all the spillover that can mean for already‑fragile malls and downtown shopping districts.
This is not a going‑out‑of‑business sale — not yet. Chapter 11 is a legal life support system. It’s not quite a get-out-of-jail-for-free card, but it does soften the blow.
Saks Global told the court it has between $1 billion and $10 billion in assets and liabilities and lined up roughly $1–1.75 billion in fresh financing to keep stores open, pay employees and reassure vendors while it tries to shed debt and renegotiate leases. New leadership is in place, including a CEO who already guided Neiman Marcus through an earlier bankruptcy during the pandemic.
The bet this time is familiar: that a cleaner balance sheet, a smaller but more profitable store base and stronger online operations can turn a troubled chain into a leaner, modern luxury platform. The risk is just as familiar – that after a decade of “retail apocalypse” headlines, there may simply not be enough foot traffic, full‑price shoppers and patient lenders left to support the old department store model, no matter how fancy the name on the door – or how famous the logo is on the shopping bag.