The founder of home improvement store Lumber Liquidators has agreed to buy and take over more than 200 locations of the chain since renamed LL Flooring following an announcement last week it would liquidate.
The 30-year-old company said last week it had failed to find a buyer during its bankruptcy and would shutter its 400 national locations. Now, about half might get a reprieve, including a handful in Philadelphia.
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Lumber Liquidators founder and current shareholder Thomas Sullivan’s F9 firm will take over 219 locations of the failing flooring company, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The deal is set to close at the end of September, after which those stores would reopen under the original Lumber Liquidators name.
The F9 offer comes after LL Flooring said it couldn’t find a buyer amid Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. F9 has not announced which 219 stores it is acquiring, leaving stores in Philadelphia and other cities in limbo, according to the PBJ.
When LL Flooring first filed for bankruptcy last month, it announced an initial batch of 94 closures, including the Exton, Fairless Hills, South Philadelphia and Woodbury, New Jersey, stores. At the time, the company secured $130M to continue operations as it sought a buyer.
Seven area stores were not named in the original batch of closures, including 10500 Roosevelt Blvd. in Philadelphia, 285 Bethlehem Pike in Colmar and N1420 East Drive in Oaks, Pennsylvania. Other nearby locations include 1205 Warren Ave. in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and three locations in Delaware.
Founded by Sullivan in 1994, the store has suffered from high interest rates and a drop in home sales which led to fewer home improvement and flooring projects.
The company went public in 2007 and underwent rebranding as LL Flooring after a 2015 report by CBS' 60 Minutes reported on heightened levels of formaldehyde in its laminate flooring.
LL Flooring’s stock was trading at 0.015 cents per share, down 25% for the day, as of approximately 2:30 p.m. ET on Monday.
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