Jeanswest retail’s latest loss

TOUGH retail conditions have claimed another high-profile casualty with Australian clothing company Jeanswest collapsing into administration.

Hundreds of jobs at dozens of stores are at risk, with administrators trying to assess the business and find parties interested in salvaging the chain.

Yesterday, KPMG’S Peter Gothard and James Stewart were appointed administrators to the company, which boasts 28 stores in Queensland among 146 across Australia.

Mr Gothard said the company’s debts or money owed to creditors had not been established, but declared all stores would remain open while he conducts “an urgent analysis of the business” ahead structure or sale.

Jeanswest opened its first store in Perth in 1972 and now employs 988 people nationally.

It is the latest in a long line of retailers succumbing to difficult economic conditions not seen since the Global Financial Crisis a decade ago.

Mr Stewart said Jeanswest was “challenged by tough marof a reket conditions and pressure from online competition”.

There are three Jeanswest stores in Townsville – at CastleTown, Willows and Stockland.

Jeanswest entering administration caps a horror start to 2020 for retailers, with EB Games, Bardot, Harris Scarfe and Curious Planet all set to close stores within weeks.

EB Games stores at Inala,

Bribie Island, Underwood, Cleveland and Lutwyche are earmarked for closure.

Bardot’s Cairns, Chermside, Indooroopilly, Kawana, North Lakes, Pacific Fair, Sunshine Plaza, Toowoomba and Townsville stores are among 58 to close nationwide before March.

Harris Scarfe faces six of its eight Queensland stores – Cairns, Hervey Bay, Mackay,

Morayfield, Rockhampton and Townsville – closing in the next month.

On Monday it was revealed that 19 Curious Planet stores across Queensland would shut.

The stores, formerly known as Australian Geographic or My Geographic, will close after administrators received “no viable offers” in the sale of the troubled business.