American Apparel is gearing up for a fresh round of expansion overseas — in department stores.
The cash-strapped clothing retailer — whose controversial CEO Dov Charney narrowly avoided a scrape with Chapter 11 this spring — has cut a string of new deals to expand distribution at highbrow department stores in Europe, The Post has learned.
Posh UK department store Selfridge’s, which has been selling American Apparel’s hipster fashions at its London flagship for about a year, will add the brand to as many as half a dozen stores in the coming year, beginning with its Birmingham location in the coming weeks, sources said.
Meanwhile, Galeries Lafayette in France, which has been selling American Apparel at its Paris flagship, has already expanded distribution to a suburban location, with plans for several more.
American Apparel is nearing a similar deal with Bloomingdale’s in the US, although it isn’t yet finalized, sources said.
American Apparel’s department-store deals are “a way for the company to expand its business without spending a lot of capital,” according to a person briefed on the plans.
Indeed, sources said tensions lately have mounted between Charney and a coterie of Canadian investors who bailed American Apparel out of its spring liquidity crisis with a financing package worth as much as $43 million.
This week, Charney is asking for an additional $2 million to $4 million to “grease the wheels” of the company’s operations, a source said.