The string of bankruptcies began on December 12 with the bankruptcy of parent company Le Ballon Beheer. Since then there have been eleven shops, the wholesaler and the online shop. And finally yesterday Van den Hurk Holding, the owner’s holding company, was declared bankrupt.
Curator Matthijs Steenvorde, who must fix all the failures, was not available for comment today. According to Van den Hurk, he won’t give that either. “This doesn’t help Le Ballon.” Steenvoorde also offered no explanation for previous failures in recent weeks.
Big ambitions
The Le Ballon fashion retail chain was founded in the early 1980s by entrepreneur Sjaak Meurs. In 2016 the store chain was taken over by Bart van Helvoirt, owner of Unlimited Footwear Group.
The new owner merged the store chain with the Invito shoe brand, which he had acquired from the bankruptcy of retail giant Macintosh. The ambitions for the combination were great. The company wanted to achieve national coverage by opening new stores.
Entrepreneur
Those plans failed. In 2019, Le Ballon and Invito were sold to director and co-shareholder Peter van den Hurk, who had worked at the women’s fashion company since the 1990s.
At the time, the entrepreneur closed five stores and invested, among other things, in automation. But in 2020, the fashion chain faced closures due to the coronavirus crisis.
Positive expectations
However, Van den Hurk was optimistic about the future in a podcast late that year. With cost savings and early growth of his brands, he thought he could make Le Ballon and Invito a success.
However, Invito’s two stores and webshop collapsed last summer. Bankruptcy reports show that this was attributed to “corona aftereffects.” Attempts to catch up with the coronavirus from 2022 have been undermined by aging inventory, staff shortages and rising rents.
Older sister
Now it seems that Invito’s older sister didn’t make it either. Owner Van den Hurk does not want to discuss the reasons for Le Ballon’s failure, but suggests that they are the same as many other failures that have occurred in the shopping street.
The retail sector has been through a tough time this past year. Partly due to coronavirus-related debts and rising costs, stores at Scotch & Soda, Score, Doek Retail, BCC, Big Bazar and Sports Unlimited Retail (Perry Sport, Aktiesport and Sprinter), among others, are losers.
2024-01-03 12:44:43
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