I just read that West Marine filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 17th. The filing does set aside some $millions to honor outstanding gift cards, but if you have one you might be wise to use it up fast, just in case. I have a few of them because I buy them every Christmas at 20% off. That essentially gives me a 20% discount anytime I want it. Or so I thought…
Here’s one news link on the topic: West Marine files for bankruptcy >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News: Providing sailing news for sailors
According to that article, their biggest creditor is Garmin.
I shouldn’t actually say I’m surprised, because I’ve often found I can buy things cheaper from marine stores online, even paying shipping, than West was charging for buying in-store.
Ironically, another link on the same page takes you to an article about Catalina auctioning off everything on June 9, including equipment, molds, and nine boats ranging from almost finished to hull only: Catalina Yachts Auction Includes Nine Boats, Sail and Power
-- Bob
Good to know. I’ll use my gift cards. Thanks for the heads up.
Things are tough these days for marine products and services businesses.
In the email I got from West Marine about the bankruptcy filing chapter 11 was that they wanted to restructure to be a stronger business model. They probably did a little overreach with the brick and mortar and not enough with the online stores. It’s true that everything is more expensive in the store. I think that is true with every retail outlet regardless of brand. In the future after restructuring I imagine they will focus on the online side and downsize the store side.
I am glad they put aside x million to honor my $30 dollar credit. It was nice to have a local store to go grab something I needed at the moment.
Oh well I guess the only constant is change.
Yeah, a local store where you can go get the fiddly bits during off hours is very handy, even though WM can be very frustrating at times and usually expensive. (They were expensive even before online shopping existed.) We have other local resources in San Diego, but they usually keep shorter hours and the best two are closed on Sundays. And I suspect the WM store here in town will be one of those which remains open, being as it was their flagship store for quite some time and is still pretty big. In fact, I imagine they will ship a lot of the stock here from stores they are shutting down elsewhere - so my selection will be better until they sell it all down. It’s going to hurt the smaller markets more, where there is no other marine supply around.