Christmas Tree Shops will start liquidating all of its stores, including the four in New Hampshire, beginning at the end of the week, after it couldn’t keep up with bankruptcy loan payments.
When the company that owns the chain, Handil Holdings, filed for bankruptcy in early May, plans were to close 10 of its 82 stores, and the stores in Nashua, North Conway, Portsmouth and Salem were not among them.
But with liquidity and revenues worsening, the company has defaulted on a $45 million bankruptcy loan, the Wall Street Journal reported. A U.S. bankruptcy court judge last week ordered funding for a “likely liquidation process,” unless an immediate buyer can be found, several news outlets reported Monday.
The lender has asked that closing sales begin Friday, so that the stores can be empty by the end of August, and therefore won’t have to pay September rents, company chair Marc Salkovitz testified in court, according to CBS News.
The federal bankruptcy court filing said any interested parties can file an objection to the liquidation with the court by Thursday afternoon. If none does, the liquidation sales will begin.
Handil Holdings LLC filed for bankruptcy May 2 in the District of Delaware U.S. Bankruptcy Court. In a motion filed May 7, the company entered a restructuring plan. Salkovitz said in May the restructuring could be completed as early as August.
Handil Holdings acquired Christmas Tree Shops from Bed, Bath & Beyond in 2020, and announced modernization plans that included a name rebrand to CTS, expanding existing stores and opening new ones. When they announced the rebranding in late 2021, Handil officials said the company had 35% growth in their first year of ownership.
But Salkovitz told the Wall Street Journal in May that rising inflation, particularly that caused by the war in Ukraine, has had an impact on the budgets of Christmas Tree Shops’ core customers.
Christmas Tree Shops is based in Middleborough, Mass., and has stores in 20 states, including 15 in the Bay State and three in Maine.
The Portsmouth store opened in 2008 in the new Christmas Tree Shops Plaza, 100 Durgin Lane, at the site of a former Costco, which closed in 1996. The old Costco building was torn down when Christmas Tree Shops arrived, and a new shopping center, with CTS as the anchor store, was built. It was one of the first in the chain to open after the company was bought by Bed, Bath & Beyond in 2003 from Charles and Doreen Bilezikian, who opened the first store on Cape Cod in 1970.