David’s Bridal might be down after its latest bankruptcy filing, but chief executive officer James Marcum said the retailer is not out — and is ready to keep its vow and deliver the all-important dress.
Marcum told WWD in an interview on Thursday that the company, vertically integrated by virtue of its China-based joint-venture suppliers, will be able to keep delivering wedding gowns to brides as it established the terms of its bankruptcy in court.
“We have 30,000 orders over there right now that are in production as we speak, that will be flown in the bellies of airplanes to get ’em over here to the States to make sure these customers get ’em,” Marcum said.
The 70-year-old chain has some experience delivering through tough times and the CEO said the company has “never missed a dress” through COVID-19 despite factory shutdowns, shipping back-ups in the Suez Canal and the rest of it.
Making that delivery for the wedding day is “a passion” and part of the “company’s culture,” Marcum said.
The company — and its culture — is being tested anew with its second bankruptcy filing in less than five years on Monday.
While the firm’s 2018 bankruptcy was tied to a mountain of debt following a private equity buyout — the court took $434 million in debt off its books in that process — this week’s process was more of an echo of the pandemic, the CEO said.
“What’s really going on here is the disruption that did come out of COVID-19,” Marcom said. “It’s still operating in this post-COVID-19 world where behaviors have changed, economic environment has changed and conditions have changed.”
Similar to other retailers, David’s Bridal had to close down during the pandemic. And while brides did come back when the stores opened up, the wedding cycle was disrupted with events planned for 2020 pushed back to 2021, and so on.
Along the way, the company developed what Marcum described as “a complicated capital structure” as it took on more debts to navigate the landscape.
Likewise, couples found that weddings started becoming more expensive and then more casual as people tried to keep costs down.
With the pandemic, the debt and changes in consumer behavior all piling on, David’s Bridal started searching for buyers last fall. And while more than 30 would-be buyers took a look at the company, Marcum said concerns around uncertainty in the market were too much.
The process now continues with the help of bankruptcy court.
“The filing really was a step to make sure that we had the time to get out there and finish marketing the business and look for investors that could take David’s long term,” Marcum said. “The goal is to sell it as a going concern. The goal is to stand up, maybe not be all of the entire store base, but emerge with a David’s Bridal that’s strong. We are an omni retailer and I believe…we are really the only omni retailer of true scale in this sector.”
Right now, the company sells to more than one-in-four brides through its website and 294 stores across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. It employs about 10,000 people, including roughly 2,000 full-time employees and 8,000 are part-time workers. Earlier in April, the company unveiled plans to lay off more than 9,000 employees.