G-Star Australia goes into administration, 57 stores at risk

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 18, 2020

Denim specialist G-Star Raw has put its Australian arm into administration with 57 shops and hundreds of jobs potentially at risk.

The 31-year-old company is based in the Netherlands and has 200 staff members in Australia. G-Star Australia Pty Ltd has named Ernst & Young’s Justin Walsh, Stewart McCallum and Sam Freeman as administrators, according to local news reports.

They said that the pressures on traditional retailers have increased during the coronavirus pandemic and the company’s significant creditors include a number of commercial landlords.

In a statement sent to news.com.au, Walsh said: “We expect that as lockdowns are lifted and various levels of government stimulus take effect, retailers will experience an uptick, however the impact remains significant.”

It's a surprising move on the part of the company with news reports that saying it wasn’t saddled with a major amount of debt before it entered administration.

Internationally, the company has a large store estate including locations in some of the key destination cities globally, such as New York, Paris and London, as well as Australia’s top shopping cities Melbourne and Sydney.

This year has seen a number of Australian retailer failures, even before the current crisis. Harris Scarfe went into receivership late last year and announced store closures in January. Fashion chain Bardot, Jeanswest, and Colette by Colette Hayman have been other high-profile casualties of the retail environment in 2020.