Companies Office records show Smiths City 2026 Limited was incorporated in February, with Sheehan and Bell serving as directors. <\/p>\n
Smiths City was previously owned by Colin Neal\u2019s investment company Polar Capital, which bought the company in 2020 after it went into receivership.<\/p>\n
A recent liquidator\u2019s report into Smiths City (2020) Limited shows liquidators sold the intellectual property assets of the company for $101,000 plus GST.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis represented the highest offer received from the sales process undertaken,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
Liquidators Colin Gower and Diana Matchett of BDO Christchurch are continuing their work dealing with Smiths City (2020) Limited.<\/p>\n
Their latest report estimates a deficit to creditors of more than $25 million.<\/p>\n
Smiths City was founded in 1918 in Christchurch and expanded to various locations throughout New Zealand.<\/p>\n
At the time of going into voluntary administration last year, the company operated nine stores, primarily in the South Island, and employed around 137 staff.<\/p>\n
The liquidators said Smiths City underwent a significant rebrand and relaunch under Polar Capital and experienced positive trading results in FY22, post the Covid-19 period.<\/p>\n
However, sales \u201cdecreased significantly\u201d during FY24 amidst a \u201cchallenging economic environment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reduction in both sales and margin, combined with a high fixed-cost structure, made the company unprofitable,\u201d a liquidator\u2019s report said.<\/p>\n
Attempts to sell the business in the months before going into administration last year had been unsuccessful, while trading conditions \u201csignificantly worsened\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Companies Office records show Smiths City 2026 Limited was incorporated in February, with Sheehan and Bell serving as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[836,74,138,39195,2199,22773,1656,22220,3218,16569,78,296,2739,1446,117,111,139,69,9769,13084,155554,644,659,465,61],"class_list":["post-552592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-836","tag-after","tag-business","tag-centuryold","tag-city","tag-comeback","tag-company","tag-going","tag-icon","tag-iconic","tag-in","tag-into","tag-liquidation","tag-making","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-owners","tag-prepare","tag-relaunch","tag-retail","tag-retailer","tag-smiths","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}