Shoes.com chairman and co-founder Roger Hardy.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
The remnants of failed Vancouver e-commerce merchant Shoes.com Technologies Inc. are being sold off by the company's receivers, including more than 20,000 pairs of shoes and 17 domain names.
Receiver Alvarez & Marsal this week posted an invitation for offers to purchase the company's 14 URLs, including Shoeme.ca – the merchant's Canadian website – as well as Shoes.com, SSSShoes.com and Shhhoes.com for its U.S. business Also for sale are about 23,600 pairs of shoes with an estimated retail value of $3.1-million from such brands as Michael Kors, Clarks, Vans and Timberland. Offers are due to A&M by March 17.
The A&M notice pertains to assets of Shoes.com's Canadian operation; additional inventory and other assets are expected to be sold off by U.S. receiver Inverness Group. According to the creditor list, Shoeme.ca Technologies Ltd. owes almost $59-million to more than 200 creditors; the biggest secured creditor is Deans Knight Capital Management Ltd., which petitioned the the company into receivership and is owed more than $10-million. Employees are owed $1.3-million and logistics firm Geodis Logistics (Canada) Inc. of Brampton, Ont., is owed $248,000. Other creditors include Google Inc., MasterCard Inc. and several shoe merchants.
The online shoe company was put into receivership in early February in Canada and the U.S., several days after announcing it was shutting down. The company, which had attempted to grow in part by acquiring other online shoe merchants, was at one point considered one a likely candidate to go public before running into problems last year. Several other e-commerce merchants in North America have either shuttered or downsized recently, including e-commerce marketplace Shop.ca, although the continued success of Ottawa retail merchant software provider Shopify Inc. points to strong overall growth in online commerce globally.
The invitation from A&M reveals that Shoes.com booked net revenue of $48-million (U.S.) from its U.S.-based websites and another $22-million (Canadian) from its 14 Canadian domain names. Between the two operations, the websites attracted more than 36 million visits in 2015 and served about 900,000 customers last year.
Sean Silcoff