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

Take pleasure in Technological know-how, a retail startup established by former Apple and J.C. Penney exec Ron Johnson, filed for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy defense on Thursday, mere months following it made its inventory current market debut.

The company’s liquidity has dwindled while its business has suffered from staffing shortages. Take pleasure in, which operates cell retail merchants, went public in October by a merger with a unique function acquisition business, or SPAC.

Delight in claimed in a submitting that it designs to provide its belongings in the United States to the technological innovation mend organization Asurion.

Asurion has agreed to present $55 million of financing so that Get pleasure from can continue on to work as it reorganizes in bankruptcy security from creditors, the filing explained. Get pleasure from expects Asurion’s bid will be ample to pay all of its secured and unsecured creditors.

Delight in and Asurion did not instantly respond to requests for comment.

Johnson, who is also CEO of Take pleasure in, launched the enterprise in 2014. He is very best known for helping to build Apple’s retail business enterprise and for trying to change all over the J.C. Penney section retailer chain, albeit unsuccessfully. He was there from 2011 to 2013, a period of time in which his strategy alienated the retailer’s main consumers.

Past yr, amid a frenzy of SPAC promotions, Delight in went public by a merger with the blank verify company Marquee Raine Acquisition Corp. At the time, the transaction valued the combined company at an business benefit of around $1.2 billion.

But additional lately, Delight in was harm partly as SPAC buyers started to choose back again their revenue and the business enterprise was left with much less dollars, court filings show.

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

Love counted venture cash companies together with Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz as first backers. The business commenced to examine strategic possibilities this past spring, in accordance to the filing.

Its shares, which trade beneath 20 cents apiece, are down additional than 96% this yr, like Thursday’s losses.