Ron Johnson during a panel discussion at a CNBC Evolve New York event on June 19, 2019.
Astrid Stowers | CNBC
Enjoy technologya retail startup that he previously founded apple and JC Penney exec Ron Johnson, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday, just months after it made its stock market debut.
The company’s liquidity dwindled while its business suffered from a shortage of staff. Enjoy, which operates mobile retail stores, went public in October through its merger with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC.
He said enjoy in file It plans to sell its US assets to technology repair company Asurion.
Asurion has agreed to provide $55 million in financing so that Enjoy can continue to operate while it is reorganized into bankruptcy protection from creditors. Enjoy expects Asurion’s offering to be sufficient to pay all of its secured and unsecured creditors.
Enjoy and Asurion did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Johnson, who is also the CEO of Enjoy, founded the company in 2014. He was best known for helping set up Apple’s retail business and trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to transform JC Penney’s store chain. He was there from 2011 to 2013, a period when his strategy alienated the retailer’s core customers.
Last year, amid the SPAC deal frenzy, have fun It was put up for public subscription through a merger with the Black Check Company Marquee Raine Acquisition Corp. At the time, the deal valued the combined business at approximately $1.2 billion.
But more recently, Enjoy has taken a hit as SPAC investors begin to get their money back and leave the business with less cash, court filings show.
Enjoy listings with only $523,000 cash on hand. The company said it had already begun laying off about 400 employees in the UK, or roughly 18% of its total workforce.
Enjoy counted venture capital firms including Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz as initial backers. It was last spring when work began evaluating strategic alternatives.
Its shares, which trade at less than 20 cents, are down more than 96% this year, including Thursday’s losses.
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