Nau Shuts Down All Stores

Nau Shuts Down All Stores
May 13, 2008

Portland, Ore.-based green apparel company Nau has gone out of business, closing all of its stores as of last Saturday, according to the Portland Business Journal. Ninety-five people will be laid off. The company's Web site homepage displayed a statement announcing the closure titled "Goodbye for Nau," which said the "highly risk-averse" capital market was the cause of the shutdown. All five Nau stores were closed, which were located in Bridgeport Village in Portland; Bellevue, Wash.; Boulder, Colo.; Chicago; and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles store had only opened in April. The company had reportedly been struggling for a year, and last July, Nau executives said that they were scaling back expansion plans and tweaking their clothing mix, Portland Business Journal reported. "We simply could not raise the necessary funds to continue to move forward," the company's statement said. "We believe this is not so much a reflection of the viability of our business, but the result of an unfortunate confluence of events."