Eddie Bauer store closing in Cape

Business Today

Eddie Bauer is closing its Westfield Shoppingtown West Park store in Cape Girardeau on April 19, but a company official says the decision had nothing to do with the announcement that its parent company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Spiegel Inc. filed for the protection on March 17, a victim of falling sales at its nearly century-old catalog business and Eddie Bauer stores along with mounting credit-card woes.

Spiegel lined up $400 million in bankruptcy financing and said its stores and catalog operations will remain open as usual as it begins a bankruptcy process it expects to last six months to a year.

Eddie Bauer operates about 535 of the outdoor-inspired clothing stores.

The Cape Girardeau store employs about 20 employees.

"Spiegel has been on the edge for a long time," said retail consultant Sid Doolittle, a partner with Chicago's McMillan/ Doolittle. "Sales at Eddie Bauer have been on a slippery slope, and the Internet has taken a lot of market share away from existing catalog retailers.

"The whole catalog industry has been pecked away at by all the specialty catalogs over the last 15 to 20 years," he said. "They're one of the dinosaurs."

Another retail specialist, Madison Riley of the retail consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates, said Spiegel's strong brand names for both its catalog and Eddie Bauer gives it an excellent chance to successfully reorganize.

Spiegel and its filing subsidiaries listed assets of $1.74 billion and liabilities of $1.71 billion as of Feb. 22.

The company follows such retailers as Kmart, FAO Inc., and Montgomery Ward into bankruptcy during a period of economic turmoil industrywide.

Spiegel was founded as a furniture store in downtown Chicago in 1865 by German immigrant Joseph Spiegel. It issued its first catalog in 1905, offering credit services through the mail.