Ex-Apple exec Ron Johnson’s Enjoy Technology files for bankruptcy

Enjoy Technologies, a retail startup established by previous Apple and J.C. Penney exec Ron Johnson, submitted for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy safety on Thursday, mere months immediately after it built its inventory industry debut.

The company’s liquidity has dwindled even though its small business has suffered from staffing shortages. Get pleasure from, which operates mobile retail suppliers, went public in Oct by means of a merger with a special purpose acquisition enterprise, or SPAC.

Delight in claimed in a submitting that it ideas to offer its property in the United States to the technologies mend organization Asurion.

Asurion has agreed to provide $55 million of funding so that Get pleasure from can keep on to run as it reorganizes in bankruptcy security from collectors, the filing said. Appreciate expects Asurion’s bid will be adequate to spend all of its secured and unsecured collectors.

Take pleasure in and Asurion failed to quickly reply to requests for comment.

Johnson, who is also CEO of Take pleasure in, launched the company in 2014. He is very best recognized for aiding to produce Apple’s retail enterprise and for trying to transform all around the J.C. Penney office shop chain, albeit unsuccessfully. He was there from 2011 to 2013, a interval in which his method alienated the retailer’s main shoppers.

Last 12 months, amid a frenzy of SPAC discounts, Take pleasure in went general public by way of a merger with the blank verify company Marquee Raine Acquisition Corp. At the time, the transaction valued the combined business at an organization value of about $1.2 billion.

But a lot more recently, Love was damage partly as SPAC buyers began to consider back their cash and the small business was left with considerably less cash, court docket filings present.

Enjoy lists only $523,000 in hard cash on hand. The business explained it has already started laying off about 400 U.K.-primarily based workforce, or roughly 18% of its whole workforce.

Love counted enterprise cash firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz as first backers. The enterprise begun to consider strategic alternate options this earlier spring, in accordance to the filing.

Its shares, which trade beneath 20 cents apiece, are down a lot more than 96% this calendar year, including Thursday’s losses.