After a 53-year run, Tattered Quilt will not be an impartial book place for much longer.
The cherished Denver corporate may just quickly be bought to Barnes & Noble, which made the highest preliminary bid forward of Monday’s bid closing date, in line with a supply aware of the method.
No bid has been authorized and Barnes & Noble may just nonetheless lose out or again out. But when authorized via the corporate’s board of administrators and a U.S. Chapter Courtroom pass judgement on, the sale is bound to ship shockwaves throughout the country’s publishing and book-selling industries.
Tattered Quilt has survived, regardless that slightly now and then, as different impartial bookstores have crumbled and consolidated, incomes it recognize around the nation. A sale to Barnes & Noble would most likely plant it on less attackable monetary floor whilst additionally finishing its independence.
Tattered Quilt opened in Cherry Creek in 1971, 3 years earlier than it was once purchased via its best-known proprietor, Joyce Meskis. She became it into an establishment, a group collecting position and a bastion of First Modification advocacy earlier than promoting it within the mid-2010s.
Len Vlahos and his spouse Kristen Gilligan got here to keep an eye on it in 2017, then bought it in 2020 to its present possession workforce, who run it as Bended Web page LLC. That LLC filed for chapter remaining October after years of giant losses. A sale would most likely finish that chapter.
The corporate was once scheduled to be auctioned off Wednesday however Tattered Quilt canceled that public sale noon Tuesday. Doing so “helps the corporate’s strategic route towards reaching the most efficient conceivable end result for the way forward for Tattered Quilt,” a spokesman stated.
The corporate nonetheless has the choice of carrying out an public sale at a later date if it needs.
“At the moment the board, control and company suggest are all actively engaged in ongoing discussions and negotiations with the certified bidders,” stated the spokesman, Steven Silvers. “We don’t understand how lengthy those will proceed or after we’ll have additional info.”
He declined to call the bidders or say what number of there are, mentioning confidentiality clauses.
“All events are taking this procedure very severely and discussions had been sure,” Silvers defined in his observation. “We stay relatively hopeful that Tattered Quilt goes to safe new possession that believes in its venture and values.”
8 other folks or firms expressed sufficient hobby in Tattered Quilt via mid-Might that they had been prepared to signal non-disclosure agreements in trade for a take a look at the corporate’s books. At the moment, a June 10 bid closing date and June 12 public sale date had been set.
Tattered Quilt had opted to not use a dealer or advertising company to put it up for sale its property.
“The chapter case and proposed sale procedure had been broadly lined within the media and publishing global. Given the hobby generated via that protection, (we) didn’t imagine {that a} dealer/marketer would most likely achieve a much broader target market,” its attorneys wrote in Might.
Tattered Quilt printed then that it misplaced about $10,000 in March, a stark development over prior months and some distance higher than the $100,000 deficit it was once expecting. Remaining week, the corporate reported losses of $53,000 for April, which is set what it was once anticipating to lose.
Tattered Quilt has reported losses of $517,000 since submitting for chapter in October. It has borrowed $700,000 from an LLC created via native philanthropists to stay afloat.
This tale was once reported via our spouse BusinessDen.