Hastings Entertainment Closing All Stores and Running Liquidation Sales
Posted on July 27, 2016
Hastings Entertainment is closing down all its stores and running going-out-of-business sales. The retailer was forced to close stores after failing to find a buyer. Hastings has about 125 stores carrying books, movies, music and video games.
Chain Store Age reports that the company was purchased by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group to oversee the liquidation sales. These sales are currently underway. A message on the Go Hastings website currently advertises these sales.Hastings President and COO Jim Litwak says in a statement, "Our hope was that the Chapter 11 process would help to prepare our business for the intended sale while also providing additional protections and financing to allow us to serve our customers as usual. Unfortunately, this process was unsuccessful."
Sales of entertainment media in CD, DVD and even Blu-ray formats have been falling as media sales shift to digital and streaming. A Forbes story says, "Sales of almost everything that Hastings traffics in are down industry-wide, and there simply is no way for many of the businesses that were created to sell records, movies, and the like to make things work in this new, all-digital economy."