The Dutch sports industry was badly shaken this week by the bankruptcy of the Unlimited Sports Group (USG), the leading sports retailer in the Netherlands with Perry Sport and Aktiesport, and the owner and distributor of a handful of sports brands.

The USG holding company and the two retailers it owns were declared bankrupt on Tuesday but the receiver, Toni van Hees, said that several parties were interested in acquiring the two retail chains, including an unnamed foreign candidate. He noted that Perry Sport and Aktiesport have many attractive stores, and that a large share of them are profitable. The receiver, who comes from the prominent Stibbe law firm, is preparing talks with the most interested parties, starting next week, with a preference for a sales of both chains to the same investor. Meanwhile, the stores will continue to operate and employees are to receive their salaries for at least six more weeks.

Employing about 2,500 people, the USG group runs 70 Perry Sport stores and 180 Aktiesport stores in the Netherlands. The USG group is also the owner of two other sports retail chains, Time Out in the Netherlands and Primo in Belgium. The group also distributes brands such as Le Coq Sportif, Pantofola d'Oro and Fila in several countries. Furthermore, USG and its shareholders bought two sports brands,Tenson and Valsport, in 2010-11.

The USG group reported a retail turnover of €234 million for 2014, which was a decline of about one percent. This included retail sales of €213 million in the Netherlands, off by one percent, and flat retail sales of €21 million in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Apparently, USG has been unstable since 2014, when it apperently ran in breach of loan covenants. Dutch newspapers report that it went through refinancing in 2014, when it made a loss of €659,000 on a total turnover of €250 million, compared with a small profit of €1.2 million in 2013 on sales of €287 million. The USG group's shareholders include its two founders, Len Langenberg and Jos Gillebaard, as well as Bencis Capital Partners, an equity firm. None of these parties were welling to comment on the current proceedings.

While there have been question marks about the financial situation at USG in the increasingly tense Dutch market, the bankruptcy came as a major blow in the country's sports industry. FGHS, the Dutch federation of sporting goods suppliers, said it was making an inventory of products that were supplied by their members to USG and left unpaid.

The receiver in the USG case stated that court authorities had ordered a cooling-off period of two months, meaning that suppliers would not be allowed to recover their goods, but “in principle” the suppliers should get compensation for products that are sold out of the stores during the bankruptcy proceedings. This period may be extended for another two months.

The receiver's office said in a press release that the failure was triggered by the recent bankruptcy proceedings around two other flagship retailers in the Netherlands, which were both major clients of USG: Scapino, a leading Dutch footwear retailer, and Vroom & Dreesman (V&D), an emblematic chain of department stores.

Scapino is a shoe retailer that had shop-in-shops run by Aktiesport in 128 of its stores around the Netherlands. Perry Sport, the more technical sports retailer owned by USG, was running a similar program at eleven V&D stores.

Bankruptcy proceedings around V&D suddenly collapsed last week, as talks for its imminent takeover were abandoned. Scapino was bought out of bankruptcy earlier this year but the new owners apparently wanted to discontinue the partnership with Aktiesport.

Observers blame tough economic market conditions in the Netherlands and the growing competition from international internet retailers for the latest bankruptcies in the Dutch retail sector, including that of Macintosh Retail Group.

As already reported in our last issue of Shoe Intelligence, Macintosh, which apparently diversified into e-commerce too late, has found buyers for parts of its low-priced Scapino chain in the Netherlands, some of its Dolcis and Manfield shoe shops in the country and its Brantano chain of family shoe stores in Belgium and Luxembourg. A Dutch shoe retailer, Ziengs Schoenen, has agreed to acquire most of the 190 Scapino stores in the Netherlands,

At last report, Macintosh still owns the Hoogenbosch Retail Group plus Invito, another Dutch chain of shoe shops that has not been covered by the insolvency proceedings, and a chain of lifestyle-oriented athletic footwear stores, Pro Sport.

More on Macintosh in Shoe Intelligence.