Famous Companies That Are Dead or Dying Today
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Keeping a business afloat is difficult work. The people in charge need to make the right moves, adapt to the times and be able to keep their customers away from the competition.
Most businesses fail and wash away without fanfare, but other companies flame out in spectacular fashion. Some of them were once industry titans before liquidating their stores in the new millennium. Others are still hanging on, their cash registers gasping for profits at every sale.
These are the 30 most famous dead and dying businesses in modern history.
Stein Mart
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Business type: Department store
Status: All stores closed, online only
Where it all went wrong: Founded in 1908, Stein Mart held nearly 300 stores in 29 states by 2013 and was a publicly traded company. By 2018, profits were down, it had cut 10 pervent of its corporate staff and had gone private.
In August 2020, the pandemic caused Stein Mart to file for Chapter 11. Shortly thereafter, the company announced it would close every one of its locations.
The brand was then purchased by Retail ECommerce Ventures (REV) in 2020. REV is a company that purchases the name from dead brands and turns them into an online-only company (REV will come up several times in this article).
The worth of Stein Mart's name? Just $6 million.
Vine
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Business type: Social media
Status: Dead (but wait!)
Where it all went wrong: Vine was a video app where users could share six-second video clips called Vines. Twitter purchased the product, and it was released in 2013. By 2015, Vine had over 200 million users and helped catapult a whole lot of people into social media stardom.
The biggest problem: Six seconds wasn't enough. Instagram began offering 15-second videos, and six-second clips were impossible to monetize. Most users migrated to YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, where they could find sponsors and post longer content.
Vine was effectively dead in October 2016 and completely gone by 2017, but there might be life in it yet — since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has more than hinted he's bringing it back.
Lord & Taylor
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Business type: Department store
Status: Bankrupt and liquidated
Where it all went wrong: Once an upscale women's department store, Lord & Taylor went defunct in 2020, closing all of its retail outlets. It was the pandemic that finally killed one of America's oldest department stores, but Lord & Taylor had been dying a slow death for years. The company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for $1.2 billion in 2006.
Hudson's Bay invested in upgrading stores, but then sold the iconic Fifth Avenue store to WeWork for $850 million in 2017, then closed several other stores in the following year.
In 2019, Hudson's Bay sold Lord & Taylor for just $75 million to Le Tote, Inc., a women's online clothing store. Le Tote was completely unable to weather the pandemic, and in Christmas 2020, the company announced it would phase out all of Lord & Taylor's retail locations.
All stores were closed by 2021. Saadia Group purchased the remaining assets of Lord & Taylor for just $12 million and opened up an online-only store with its name.
Henri Bendel
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Business type: Luxury retail
Status: Defunct
Where it all went wrong: Once one of America's most popular women's department stores, Henri Bendel shut down completely in 2019.
Henri Bendel was a victim of failing to compete with online commerce. The company had held its iconic location on Fifth Avenue in New York City since 1895 and expanded outside of the city in 2008. It was a promising start, but ultimately the company could not compete.
Henri Bendel's parent company, L Brands, announced it would close all of its stores in 2018. In 2019, all shops and its online store were closed.
Pier 1 Imports
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Business type: Furniture
Status: Chapter 11 bankruptcy, all stores closed
Where it all went wrong: Pier 1 was a home furniture company that had 942 stores in North America at the time of its Chapter 11 filing in February 2020.
The death of Pier 1 can be chalked up to the pandemic, although the company had posted declining sales for nine consecutive quarters. Companies like Amazon, Wayfair and Target had been eating away at the company's profits for years, and the pandemic was enough to wipe the company out for good.
Pier 1 closed all of its doors by October 2020 and was purchased by REV.
Borders
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Business type: Books
Status: Bankrupt, liquidated
Where it all went wrong: Borders began as a small used bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1971. It expanded at a reasonable pace, with 21 bookstores by 1992. Then Kmart bought the company for $190 million.
For a while, things were good. Borders was the number one destination for books. The shops were huge and sold DVD, CDs, and other similar types of media. Many of them even had their own Starbucks. In 2005, Borders posted a profit of $101 million.
It would be dead six years later, in 2011. What happened?
Borders was plagued by bad leadership with lucrative compensation packages despite the company undergoing Chapter 11. Additionally, it couldn't diversify. Amazon's Fire and Barnes and Noble's Nook e-readers were taking up a significant chunk of book sales, and Borders' Kobo came out too late.
Borders liquidated all of its 226 stores in 2011.
The Weinstein Company
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Business type: Media and entertainment
Status: Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Where it all went wrong: It all went wrong with Harvey Weinstein. The former Hollywood heavyweight and movie mogul has been accused of assaulting over 100 women and will very likely die in prison.
The Weinstein Company, which he cofounded in 2005 with his brother, declared bankruptcy in 2018 and went defunct.
Toys 'R' Us
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Business type: Toy store
Status: Dead, attempting revival
Where it all went wrong: Everyone was a Toys "R" Us kid in the 1980s and 1990s, when the massive toy company was peddling all sorts of action figures, dolls, playsets and video games to children everywhere. At its height, it had 1,450 locations worldwide and controlled 25 percent of the toy market.
A series of blows killed Toys "R" Us, including an ever-changing set of executives and flat-out failing to compete with the internet, where competition undercut their prices. The company even cut a $50 million deal with Amazon in 2000, where the fledgling company obtained exclusive rights to selling Toys "R" Us products, and then it sold other toys, too.
Ultimately, the toy company fell victim to $5.3 billion worth of debt that caused the company to close all of its stores in early 2018.
Toys "R" Us is now under the ownership of WHP Global, which plans to revive the company and open brick-and-mortar stores.
Pebble
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Business type: Electronics
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: Pebble — formally known as Pebble Technology Corp — was an electronics company that attempted to launch one of the first smartwatches.
Pebble raised a ton of money via crowdfunding, raising over $10 million through a 2012 Kickstarter campaign and shipped 1 million first-generation smartwatches by the end of 2014.
But as soon as Apple Watch came on the market in 2015, Pebble was dead in the water. Fitbit purchased the company in 2016, but later the electronic fitness business shut down Pebble for good.
Circuit City
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Business type: Electronics
Status: Dead, now online
Where it all went wrong: Circuit City was a big-box retailer that sold televisions, speakers, washing machines and other types of home electronics and appliances. It was popular in the 1990s, and at its height, it expanded to 1,520 stores and 46,000 workers in North America.
But as Best Buy gained traction in the 2000s, sales declined. To save money, the company fired 3,400 experienced salespeople and stopped paying commission, which sapped the morale of workers. And its web presence was just awful.
Circuit City shuttered in 2009 with $625 million in debt. TigerDirect bought the company's name and uses it as an online-only retail store.
Bradlees
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Business type: Department store
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: Bradlees was a New England-based department store that first opened in 1958. Stop and Shop bought the company in 1961 and owned it until 1992, when it sold the company to an investment company.
From then on, Bradlees bled money year after year, and first filed for Chapter 11 in 1995. By 2000, it filed for Chapter 7, closed all of its stores and liquidated its inventory.
You might remember Bradlees by their human mascot, Mrs. B, who played up the chain’s low prices on painfully '90s television commercials.
The Wiz
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Business type: Electronics
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: "Nobody Beats the Wiz." It's a slogan that was everywhere in the 1990s and even inspired a "Seinfeld" episode about one of Elaine's awful, short-term boyfriends.
The Wiz was a New England-based electronic store that opened in 1977. By 1998, it had almost 20 stores, then rapidly expanded to a company with over 80 stores and 2,000 employees within a year.
Completely overestimating its abilities, the Wiz was completely dead by 2003.
Gawker
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Business type: Media
Status: Bankrupt, under new ownership
Where it all went wrong: Gawker was the flagship gossip site for Gawker Media, which managed Jezebel, io9 and Deadspin.
Launched by Nick Denton in 2002, Gawker became one of the most popular gossip sites on the internet, although it faced a series of internal problems, including a revolving door of editor-in-chiefs.
It all came crumbling down with the Hulk Hogan sex tape controversy. The site obtained a video of the pro wrestler and a woman, Heather Clem, engaging in post-coital pillow talk. Hogan used several racial slurs which heavily damaged his reputation.
Gawker refused to take the video down despite a judge ordering them to do so.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal, finally found his chance. The gossip magazine outed him in 2007, so Thiel bankrolled Hogan's lawsuit, with the verdict ultimately awarding Hogan millions in damages.
The site went completely dead in 2016. In 2018, Bryan Goldberg, owner of Bustle, purchased the domain for less than $1.5 million at a bankruptcy auction. It relaunched in July 2021 and was shuttered again in February 2023.
Sharper Image
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Business type: Home electronics and gadgets
Status: Dead, then revived under new ownership
Where it all went wrong: Sharper Image was one of those mall stores where everything in it looked cool, but you never really wanted to buy it. There were massage chairs that cost $5,000, robotic vacuum cleaners, and other largely overpriced and useless gadgets for aimless shoppers.
As The Washington Post wrote, its wares "were dedicated to streamlining your life by .002 percent."
Sharper Image went completely under in 2008 and declared bankruptcy and had a long list of creditors. In 2016, the name was sold for a surprising $100 million to the California-based ThreeSixtyGroup. It now functions as an online retailer.
Discovery Zone
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Business type: Children's entertainment
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: Discovery Zone was founded in 1990 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by 1996, having accumulated $367 million in debt.
So what went wrong?
Discovery Zone was an indoor playground venue of slides, ball pits and rope nets for children. It expanded way too fast and opened 15 stores in 18 months. By 1994, it had some 300 stores and was controlled by Blockbuster, which took a 50.1 percent stake in the company.
Drowning in debt by 1999, Discovery Zone abruptly closed the majority of its stores, with many parents arriving to shuttered locations with a birthday troupe in tow. The company then went completely defunct in 2001.
KB Toys
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Business type: Toy store
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: KB Toys was a toy store that, at its height in 1998, had 2,477 storefronts and $1.6 billion in sales. It was Toys "R" Us' biggest competitor. Who would win the great toy wars of the 1990s? Well, no one.
In 2000, the company was sold to venture capital firm Bain Capital LLC for $305 million. By 2004, it had acquired over $300 million in debt, filed for Chapter 11, closed 600 stores and laid off over 3,400 employees.
KB Toys limped along until 2009, when it filed bankruptcy again, liquidated its assets and closed its remaining 460 stores.
Blockbuster
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Business type: Video rentals
Status: Bankrupt, liquidated with one remaining store (but....)
Where it all went wrong: Blockbuster is a legendary piece of failed business history.
In the 1990s, Blockbuster was a Friday night destination for millions of people looking to rent a movie. And for a while, business was booming. The company had around 9,000 storefronts across the world by 2004.
So what happened? Infamously, the company passed on buying Netflix for just $50 million and also ignored early threats of video rental kiosks like Redbox. Blockbuster did little to innovate itself, and as streaming media was rapidly becoming the place to buy and rent movies, Blockbuster collapsed.
Dish Network bought Blockbuster for $320 million in 2011. It shuttered all stores in 2013 and laid off the remaining 2,800 employees. One sole, remaining Blockbuster exists in Bend, Oregon. It's independently owned.
However, it might be making a comeback. Blockbuster.com is a live site with a simple message stating, "We are working on rewinding your movie." Stay tuned!
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
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Business type: Circus
Status: Revived
Where it all went wrong: In a world full of new, inexpensive entertainment options — and in a world that is increasingly sensitive to animal rights — the circus industry had no chance of surviving.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had been around since 1919 and became the most famous circus company in the world. Billed as "the greatest show on Earth," the circus suffered a decline in attendance for years. In 2016, it ceased using live elephants, which further hurt its sales, and high operating costs broke its bottom line.
The last show was held on May 21, 2017. The circus had been operating for 146 years. However, it, too, is looking to make a comeback with audience-immersive shows slated for 2023.
Bon-Ton
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Business type: Department store
Status: Dead, revived as an online retail shop
Where it all went wrong: Bon-Ton began as a small dry good store in York, Pennsylvania, in 1898. The business expanded slowly over the following decades, mostly in Pennsylvania, until Bon-Ton expanded into the Midwest in the 2000s. The department store chain doubled in size in the 2000s by purchasing Elder-Beerman and Northern Department Store Group.
By 2011, the company was in decline. In fact, Bon-Tons posted six straight years of financial losses, from 2011 to 2017, and had burned through four CEOs. Store closures began in 2017, and the brand filed for Chapter 11 in Q1 2018. By April 2018, it filed for Chapter 7, liquidated all of its stock and closed all of its 267 stores.
A venture capital firm named CSG Generation bought Bon-Ton's IP and relaunched in August 2018. A single test store was opened in Illinois, but it closed in 2020.
Bon-Ton now exists as an online department store.
Modell's
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Business type: Sporting goods
Status: Dead/revived online
Where it all went wrong: Modell's was a mid-tier sporting goods company that was stuck in the unenviable position of not being the cheapest place on the block, or the store you go to when you want some high-end equipment.
Founded in 1832 in Manhattan, Modell's survived as a family-run business for 132 years and once had a chain of over 150 stores.
During the 2010s, Modell's went into decline. Competition from cheaper big box stores like Dick's and online competition hurt sales, and even the collapse of Sports Authority didn't send enough customers its way.
Modell's filed for Chapter 11 in March 2020 and closed all stores by August. Like many other brands on this list, Modell's was reanimated into an online retailer by REV, who purchased the IP for $3.64 million.
Sports Authority
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Business type: Sporting equipment
Status: Dead, purchased by Dick's Sporting Goods
Where it all went wrong: While Sports Authority has roots dating back to the 1920s, Sports Authority first opened in 1987. It merged with Gart Sports, which began in 1928, in 2003, expanding its reach and making it the largest sporting goods chain in the country. By 2016, it filed for Chapter 11. What happened?
Sports Authority was massively overleveraged and had taken on an enormous amount of debt. Revenues were flat from 2013 to 2014, the company had tried to invest in online sales and store remodels, and it had $1 billion in debt coming due by 2017, according to one analyst.
After it converted Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, Sports Authority closed its stores and liquidated its inventory in 2016. Dick's Sporting Goods bought the brand name for just $15 million.
Payless ShoeSource
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Business type: Shoe store
Status: Attempting a comeback
Where it all went wrong: Affordable footwear company Payless survived for over 60 years and had 2,000 stores in North America before filing for Chapter 11 in 2019. It closed all of its stores and laid off about 16,000 workers and was expected to die during its bankruptcy proceedings.
But then, like the winged sandals of Hermes, it flew up from its bankrupt pit and sprung back to life. Or at least it's trying to.
Payless came back as an online retailer and has plans for hundreds of stores across the country. In 2021, it opened a flagship store in Miami.
MoviePass
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Business type: Entertainment
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: MoviePass was a subscription-based movie ticketing service with an overly ambitious goal: For $9.95 per month, you could watch one movie a day at most major movie chains.
It was a brilliant model for cinephiles, who could now go to the theater and see virtually any film they wanted (except 3D or IMAX movies) for the price of a cheap drive-thru meal. Of course, MoviePass was just treading water from the get-go.
The pricing model was wholly unprofitable, and MoviePass shut down in September 2019. Its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, filed for Chapter 7 on Jan. 28, 2020.
Dressbarn
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Business type: Women's clothing
Status: Dead, now exists as an online retailer
Where it all went wrong: Dressbarn began in 1962 in Stamford, Connecticut. The company grew rapidly. By 1982, it was trading on the Nasdaq, and at its height, it had 650 stores located throughout the United States.
But as competition increased with online retailers, Dressbarn's profits took a nosedive. Dressbarn shed customers and became unprofitable, and eventually, the clothing giant called it quits in 2019 and announced it would close all of its stores and lay off its 6,8000 employees.
Not long after announcing its closing, Dressbarn sold its name and its online site to Retail Ecommerce Ventures LLC, or REV, for an undisclosed amount.
A&P
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Business type: Grocery store
Status: Dead
Where it all went wrong: Founded in 1859, A&P was once not only the largest grocery chain in the country. By the 1950s, it was the second biggest business in the United States. Only General Motors was bigger.
But A&P rested on its laurels for far too long. As supermarkets began to specialize in healthier foods and trend-driven diets, A&P just sort of...didn't. Companies like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's sapped A&P of its customer base.
That, coupled with crippling blows from the Great Recession, never allowed A&P to recover.
Teavana
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Business type: Teavana
Status: All stores closed, greatly downsized
Where it all went wrong: Teavana was a boutique tea store which started in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997. The company made headways into malls throughout the country and, in 2011, hit the stock market with a $121 million IPO.
In 2012, Starbucks purchased the company for a whopping $620 million, then the largest purchase by the coffee giant.
Five years later, Starbucks announced it would close all of its 379 Teavana stores and lay off 3,300 employees (those employees got first dibs at open Starbucks jobs).
Teavana still exists and sells bottled iced tea and tea sachets at major grocery stores, albeit with far less of a selection than it once had. But Teavana as we once knew it is long dead.
JCPenny
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Business type: Department store
Status: Dying
Where it all went wrong: JCPenny is one of America's most well-known, mall-based department stores that has managed to hang on for a long time, despite the waning popularity of shopping malls.
Its decline is a familiar story: boomed in the 1990s along with shopping malls, then slowly declined in the 2000s onward as online retailers and specialized stores ate up the consumer base.
Shortly after the pandemic was in full swing, JC Penny filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, and was sold to Brookfield Asset Management and Simon Property Group — two of the country's biggest mall operators — for $800 million. The company closed roughly a third of its stores in 2022, but the retailer is still holding on.
Linens 'N Things
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Business type: Big box houseware retailer
Status: Dead, revived online
Where it all went wrong: Linens 'N Things opened in 1975 as a big box home goods store and expanded rapidly, growing to 55 stores by 1983. By 2006, it had 618 stores in North America and was purchased by a private equity group for $1.3 billion.
By 2008, Linens 'N Things was under Chapter 11 and auctioning off all of its stores and went defunct in 2009. According to CBS, "Linens 'N Things was done in by a combination of scared consumers, useless merchandise, slow housing sales, higher prices for Chinese goods and freight, and the suffocating weight of $650 million in debt."
REV purchased the Linen 'N Things brand name and operates it as an online-only business.
RadioShack
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Business type: Electronics
Status: Limping along
Where it all went wrong: In the 2000s and early 2010s, it seemed like everywhere you looked, there was a friggin' RadioShack on the corner. That's because there were, quite literally, too many RadioShacks.
By 2014, there were 4,300 RadioShacks in North America — and some of them were so close together they cannibalized sales, sunk profits and screwed with inventory. That, notorious management problems (there were seven CEOs from 2005 to 2014), financial missteps and online competition rendered visiting a RadioShack mostly moot. The company went bankrupt in 2015 and was purchased by REV.
There are still roughly 400 RadioShack stores still open. They operate independently from REV.
Sears/Kmart
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Business type: Department store
Status: Dying
Where it all went wrong: Once one of America's most important companies with its mail-order Sears Roebuck catalogue that dates back to the late 1800s, Sears has been struggling for well over a decade. During the 1990s, Sears rivaled Walmart in revenue ($31.8 billion and $32.6 billion, respectively), but Sears fell as Walmart offered discounted items and Sears stayed a mid-tier retailer.
Sears also failed to capitalize on online trends, nor could it focus on anything it could specialize in or do better than the competition. In 2005, it purchased and merged with Kmart, another faltering business, and in 2018, it filed for Chapter 11.
Everyone thought the once-mighty giant was done. It wasn't. Sears won its bankruptcy auction and limped away, then shuttered several hundred stores in the next three years. It's now believed that there are just 17 Sears and 20 Kmarts in the entire country, and all indications point to more closings in the future.