Party City files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a tale of the Retail Apocalypse

While Bed Bath & Beyond is facing bankruptcy, Party City has actually filed. Erik of Retail Archaeology shared a ground-level view of the story in Party City: The Party Is Over!

In this episode we take a look at Party city and discuss their recent bankruptcy filing and the challenges they are facing.

Erik thought that, if Party City survived the pandemic, it would have gotten through the worst and be likely to survive. My experience is that this is not always the case. The first Retail Apocalypse story I covered, Borders Books, happened two years after the Great Recession officially ended, so I'm not surprised that Party City declared bankruptcy now.

Yahoo Finance showed an aerial view of the story in Party City files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stock bounces.

Yahoo Finance Live’s Brad Smith reports that Party City has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

They seem even less optimistic than Erik, which is saying something.

Speaking of Erik, here is his video from November 2018, asking Party City: A Decrease In Partying?

In this episode of Retail Archaeology we take a look at Party City and talk about the recent drop in the shares of their stock.

Party City has been in trouble for a while, which fits one of the patterns for chains that fail during the Retail 'Apocalypse. All of them had issues that brought them down when a crisis hit.

All three videos mentioned the helium shortage increasing the prices of balloons and decreasing their sales. That's something I haven't blogged about but should. In the meantime, stay tuned for this year's Razzie nominations. It's Morbin' time!