Recently, the owner of Family Christian Stores shared a plan to keep his company’s store locations open in the interest of their employees. Owner Rick Jackson explained the move would save the jobs of over 4,000 employees, despite the company filing for bankruptcy earlier this year.
Jackson bought Family Christian Stores in 2012 before restructuring the business into a non-profit organization. The company directs its earnings to Family Christian ministries, which also collects proceeds from sister company Giving Films. Unfortunately, a volatile market space coupled with a significant debt load forced the company to file for bankruptcy in February of this year.
Jackson spoke about the over-leveraged position of the company created by prior ownership of the business. “The previous owners had so much debt that when the stores went down, they had enough to take care of themselves, but they couldn’t pay for the debt,” he said.
According to the business owner, he was admittedly too optimistic with his aspirations of turning the company around. Jackson cited detrimental consumer trends such as online shopping that are plaguing brick-and-mortar businesses throughout the global economy.
“So we took it on, we were too positive thinking, and tectonic trends – people going online not going to brick and mortar stores – brought sales down 10 to 20 percent, just like Borders,” Jackson added. However, the entrepreneur maintains that Family Christian Stores will continue to operate using a “chapter reorganization.”
Jackson explained that regardless of the outcome, he would be losing money. Therefore, he outlined how to reorganize the business to keep the brand in operation and thousands of individuals employed while setting Family Christian Stores up to be successful in a different venture.
“We are gonna lose millions of dollars ourselves, all we did was loan money to the parent and its out,” the CEO stated. “It’s gone, and we don’t get interest. So we can either quit, [file a] chapter seven, which means all stores go out of business immediately, or [do] a reorganization called a 363 sell, which is where Family Christian Ministries forms a new entity to buy assets and it cleans out any other debts and so forth, positioning it to be successful going forth.”
“It’s part of our plan, to keep the stores open, to keep 4,000 people in jobs, and then all the vendors that rely on us to sell their books and so forth,” he added. “It’s a nice brand, we just want to keep going. So right now, if the judge approves our plan, in 90 days we will be out and moving on.”
It is certainly encouraging to see the Christian-based company remaining in business despite its financial troubles. In a time when Western society seems to perpetually stray from God, maximizing the existing Christian influence is necessary. The American Tribune recently reported on comments from the founder and lead singer of Skillet, a Christian rock band, who warned of a plot against America.
“If there’s anything that’s clear to me, there is a revolution to tear down American society; the entire structures of this system. But it’s not really about tearing down America, it’s about tearing down the underpinnings of what built America, Christian civilization. There is a revolution to tear down Christianity, the reflection of Christ in any of our cultures, our traditions, our sexual mores, our theology, our culture. Our everything!” Cooper said.
Featured image credit: By Familychristiandirect – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19312214
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