Debt pile revealed in new filing for collapsed Jeanswest

Jeanswest had just $13 million in assets to cover about $53m of debts when it collapsed for the second time last month.

New filings also reveal that the 90-store national retailer owes $4.1m to its 600 staff and is sitting on nearly $776,000 in unclaimed gift vouchers.

Jeanswest’s Hong Kong backers appointed insolvency experts from Pitcher Partners as administrators of the chain four weeks ago, the 53-year-old brand becoming another victim of cost-of-living pressures and changing retail trends that are making it difficult for bricks-and-mortar retailers to turn a profit.

The administrators are exploring a rescue that would see Jeanswest continue on as an online-only business.

According to creditor claims included in an update filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Harbour Guidance Pty Ltd — the Australian holding company that was put under — owed about $53m when Pitcher Partners was called in, including $4.1m in redundancy entitlements and unpaid leave.

Harbour Guidance, linked to clothing and textiles mogul Chun Fan Yeung, has owned Jeanswest since it first fell into administration at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Mr Yeung was previously involved with the retailer through a company that bought Jeanswest in 2017 in a related party deal from the Hong Kong-listed Glorious Sun Enterprise.

According to the filings, most of the $53m Jeanswest debt — about $45m — is claimed by two Australian and Hong Kong companies associated with Mr Yeung.

The Australian Tax Office is owed $122,000.

Almost all of the estimated $13m in assets listed in the update was made up of inventory and store fixtures and fittings.

Pitcher Partners has been quick to offload Jeanswest’s stock, almost immediately launching a successful clearance sale that offloaded 160,000 items, including 53,000 pairs of jeans, in just two weeks.

Mr Yeung helped pull Jeanswest — founded in Perth in 1972 — back from the brink after the 2020 collapse but he has struggled to revive the brand’s sales amid increasingly tough competition from online retailers.

Pitcher Partners’ lead administrator, Lindsay Bainbridge, said at the time of his firm’s appointment that the owners had “fought for five years to revive (Jeanswest) but had concluded it was time to step back from physical stores to focus on online retail”.

Jeanswest was founded by high-flying WA entrepreneur Alister Norwood, who opened the first Jeanswest store in Perth in 1972. The business expanded to the east coast before Mr Norwood sold up in the 1990s after key suppliers, including Levi Strauss and Faberge, stopped delivering stock because of mounting debts.

It was bought in 1994 by Glorious Sun, which expanded the brand overseas with stores in Russia, Fiji, Venezuela, Vietnam and China.