Pursuits
U.S. Retailers Face Growing Hostility From Suppliers
- Bankruptcies have hit manufacturers hard, and it isn’t over
- As stores close, ‘vendors are getting extraordinarily nervous’
A Payless ShoeSource Inc. store in New York on May 2, 2012.
Photographer: Scott Eells/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
When a group of disgruntled shoe manufacturers assembled in China earlier this year, they put up signs with messages in English, hoping they would be seen by Americans 7,000 miles away: “Payless Sucks.”
The footwear suppliers had lost patience with the soon-to-be-bankrupt Payless Inc. chain, which they said owed them hundreds of millions of dollars. In frustration, they held the meeting to assess their options: enlist the Chinese government to push for payment, try to block shipments from Payless’s Xiamen warehouse to the U.S., or sue Payless in American courts.