On Death’s Door, American Apparel Finally Shutters its ‘SoHo Factory Outlet’

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Onetime hipster clothier, American Apparel, officially closed its SoHo Factory Outlet earlier this week. It’s been on death watch since October 2015, when brokers from RKF first began pimping the primo commercial real estate.

Success was apparently elusive. However, a sign went up in the windows this week steering customers to its Harlem “flea market” happening later this month (November 25). Brown paper covers the glass, too.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  The once-formidable “Made-in-Downtown L.A.” clothing company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy exactly a year ago, and has been bleeding cash ever since.

A report in the New York Post yesterday suggested that American Apparel might not make it through the holiday season.

Working with a restructuring expert, the company, famous for its provocative ads and Made in the USA apparel, has had talks with licensing firms and could agree to be sold in a deal that would precipitate another trip through bankruptcy court.

That the once-thriving apparel maker is flailing so soon after reorganization is a black eye to US manufacturing. Whispers around Los Angeles suggest that the company will soon exit its downtown factory, once home to 4,000 jobs, and either drop manufacturing all together or move to a state where labor is less expensive — say, North Carolina — where it would contract out its work.