Overview
- Clothing brands Ted Bodin and Fantome Group have requested concurso preventivo, a court-run process to restructure debt so they can keep operating.
- Fantome Group, which has produced for Reebok, Kappa, Kevingston and Cheeky, has already had its reorganization case opened by the court according to recent coverage.
- Official records show Fantome Group racked up 33 bounced checks totaling 44,978,000 pesos, and earlier court orders froze more than 130 million pesos in its bank accounts, which pushed it into nonpayment.
- Fantome Group links its crisis to lost contracts after clients shifted production to imports it called a “diabolical” form of competition, plus higher costs for inputs, energy and wages, heavy taxes, and a lack of anti-dumping enforcement.
- The firm shrank from about 120 workers to roughly 20 after a partial pivot to its own brand, a Belgrano shop, and an embroidery and printing unit, while sector data show clothing sales fell 0.4% year over year in March and 6.3% in the first quarter, pointing to wider strain on jobs and factories.