Clothing retailer files for bankruptcy protection

June 28--A retailer selling junior- and plus-size clothing for teen girls and young women announced Sunday that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Its only California store is in the City of Industry, which is about 15 minutes north of La Habra, according to the chain's website.

"The dramatic unexpected change in the economy beginning in 2008 made a financial restructuring of this kind critical," according to a press release from Deb Shops.

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A group of the retailer's senior lenders led by Ableco Finance LLC has entered into an agreement to acquire substantially all of the company's assets through a court-supervised auction. The lenders' offer is a stalking-horse bid, which sets the floor for the auction. If they win, the deal is anticipated to close this September.

As part of this agreement, Lee Equity Partners LLC will retain an ownership stake in Deb. Lee purchased Deb in 2007.

The company said it is also seeking court approval to continue all customer programs, including gift cards, layaways, and exchanges, and expects this request to be granted shortly. Additionally, Deb will continue purchasing merchandise and other materials for sale in its stores.

Deb Shops' sells tops, bottoms, dresses, coats, lingerie, accessories and shoes including an asymmetrical cropped top for $17.99 and plus-size dark skinny denim for $34.99. Its products have been in magazines such as Seventeen and Cosmo Girl Prom and on TV shows such as Good Morning America and Today Show.

The chain, which targets 13 to 25 year olds, has 324 stores. Since the early 1970s, it focused on offering apparel to the junior-size teens. Over the past 15 years, it increased its sizes to 26.

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Fair Trade Goods Popular Despite Recession « UConn Today

This holiday season, the ubiquitous sweater gift and peppermint mocha latte treat for the tired shopper may come with an added bonus: a boost for human rights.

A new study by political scientists and researchers who specialize in economic human rights at UConn has found that a strong majority of Americans will pay more for items they feel confident have been ethically produced.

In three national surveys over three years, the researchers found that more than 60 percent of people consistently said they would pay at least $5 more for a sweater that normally sells for $20, if they could be sure it was not made in a sweatshop.

And coffee drinkers said they would pay a premium for fair trade coffee.

“Since coffee is the second most widely traded commodity in the world – oil is the first – we think this is also evidence that most people are willing to go beyond established restrictions on slave production and child labor to consider broader ethical concerns,” says Lyle Scruggs, associate professor of political science in the College of Liberal Art and Sciences.

The findings are based on surveys done in the U.S. in 2006, 2008, and 2009.

Even during the recession, support for fair trade goods – products made under humane working conditions – has not dropped much, the researchers found.

“When we asked the question during spring 2009 when unemployment was around 9 percent, support was about the same as support back in 2006, when unemployment was below 5 percent,” says Scruggs. “This surprised us a bit.”

The research challenges the assumption that people will not pay more for ethically produced goods, or that only affluent Americans will do so. The researchers found willingness among even less educated and lower income consumers to buy sweatshop-free or fair trade goods.

“A very significant proportion of people believe that people have a right to a minimum guaranteed standard of living,” says Shareen Hertel, assistant professor of political science and co-director of the Economic Rights Research Group at UConn’s Human Rights Institute.

“These surveys show us that on the whole a large percentage of Americans believe economic rights are human rights,” she says.

An article based on some of these results was published earlier this year in the journal Political Science Quarterly . Hertel, Scruggs, and C. Patrick Heidkamp, an assistant professor of geography at Southern Connecticut State University who earned a Ph.D. in economic geography at UConn, were co-authors of that study.