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Orange County Retail ~ The 411 on retail news in Orange County.

Retailer with 5 O.C. stores files for bankruptcy

October 21st, 2008, 6:23 pm · 10 Comments · posted by Hang Nguyen, retail reporter

Fitness Holdings International, a retailer of fitness equipment for home use, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, according to a court document.

The Long Beach-based retailer operates 67 Busy Body Home Fitness stores and 44 Omni Fitness Equipment stores. In Orange County, Busy Body has five locations –Newport Beach, Tustin (The District at Tustin Legacy), Costa Mesa, Laguna Niguel and Huntington Beach. Those local stores range from 2,125 square feet to 3,850 square feet. There are no Omni stores in Orange County.

The company said “as of this time” it intends to close 19 stores, subject to bankruptcy court approval. None of those are in Orange County. The 19 stores include locations in San Diego, Los Angeles and Torrance. (For addresses of Busy Body stores in those three cities, CLICK HERE.) It said it anticipates the store closing sales will conclude by the end of November, according to the court document.

Busy Body sells treadmills, exercise bikes, rowing machines, dumbbells and other fitness equipment.

The company generated total revenue of about $115 million for its fiscal year ended June 30. For the same period, it had a loss of about $4.4 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

“The impact of weakness in the economy and declines in the performance of the retail sector, in general, has negatively impacted sales …,” according to the court document.

(Photo of the Tustin Busy Body store from the retailer’s Web site.)

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10 Comments

10 Comments

  • Eugene says:

    looking forward for more information about this. thanks for sharing. Eugene

  • Donald says:

    Wow, how can a company pull off something like this? Sure, our economy is in turmoil, but with all of the unhealthy, overweight Americans, they should be swimming in money!

    Sooooooo sad :’o(

  • Anthony says:

    What a shame. Everyday I wake up to read that another retailer bites the dust or is filing Bankruptcy. But with that said, FHI deserves this. They bullied every smaller fitness outfit out of the industry and suppliers followed suit. Not they have you know what all over their faces! :)

  • Reason says:

    Uh…I thought they were already out of business.
    My wife bought a nice treadmill from there about 5-6 years ago.

  • Anthony says:

    I would have to disagree with Anthony. I do not understand how FHI deserves it. Under his logic, Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and ANY large chain deserves bankruptcy. They all pushed the “little man”. Shame on companies for creating competition and for trying to expand their market share.

    What a joke.

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