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

Love Technological know-how, a retail startup started by previous Apple and J.C. Penney exec Ron Johnson, filed for Chapter 11 individual bankruptcy security on Thursday, mere months right after it created its stock market debut.

The firm’s liquidity has dwindled though its company has endured from staffing shortages. Get pleasure from, which operates cell retail outlets, went general public in Oct by way of a merger with a special objective acquisition organization, or SPAC.

Take pleasure in said in a filing that it strategies to promote its assets in the United States to the technological innovation maintenance firm Asurion.

Asurion has agreed to deliver $55 million of financing so that Delight in can continue to work as it reorganizes in bankruptcy defense from lenders, the submitting mentioned. Love expects Asurion’s bid will be enough to pay all of its secured and unsecured collectors.

Appreciate and Asurion didn’t promptly respond to requests for remark.

Johnson, who is also CEO of Love, started the enterprise in 2014. He is finest regarded for encouraging to create Apple’s retail business enterprise and for hoping to flip all around the J.C. Penney division retailer chain, albeit unsuccessfully. He was there from 2011 to 2013, a time period in which his tactic alienated the retailer’s core shoppers.

Very last 12 months, amid a frenzy of SPAC deals, Appreciate went public by way of a merger with the blank look at business Marquee Raine Acquisition Corp. At the time, the transaction valued the mixed business enterprise at an business benefit of approximately $1.2 billion.

But more lately, Love was harm partly as SPAC investors commenced to take back their income and the enterprise was left with considerably less money, court docket filings display.

Take pleasure in lists only $523,000 in hard cash on hand. The firm explained it has currently begun laying off about 400 U.K.-based mostly staff, or about 18% of its total workforce.

Love counted undertaking capital firms including Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz as initial backers. The business started to assess strategic possibilities this previous spring, in accordance to the submitting.

Its shares, which trade below 20 cents apiece, are down much more than 96% this 12 months, like Thursday’s losses.