Two West Michigan Art Van Stores to Reopen for Liquidation Sales

At the end of February, right before the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Art Van Furniture announced they were filing for bankruptcy and closing their stores. They had just started the first round of their liquidation sales just as the pandemic started ramping up, so just as businesses were forced to close, so too was the liquidation sale, forced to end early.

WOODTV reports that American Signature who also owns Value City Furniture, got the OK to open a few Art Van Furniture stores to start liquidating inventory.

At the beginning of March, Art Van Furniture announced they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and were closing their 190-ish stores. As the threat of the coronavirus grew, the stores were never able to get past the first round of the liquidation sale, before they ended up closing because of Michigan's Stay-At-Home order. Leaving the future of the stores' inventory and effectively ending a lot of jobs sooner than expected. (which is also true for most of the world.)

Now that stores are reopening, according to WOODTV, American Signature was given the approval to open a few stores, 5 in Michigan as well as a couple in a Baltimore and St. Louis and start liquidating the remaining inventory, as part of the bankruptcy filing.

  Here in West Michigan, they’ll hold their “total inventory blowout” at two stores, the store at 4273 Alpine Ave NW and the location on 28th Street (4375 28th SE).  WOODTV says a Value City Furniture spokesperson said the sales will begin this Thursday, July 2nd.  Stores will be open every day from 11 am to 7 pm, until everything is sold.

They also say that American Signature tried to hire as many previous Art Van Furniture employees as they could to help run the sale. The other stores opening for the "Total Liquidation Blowout"  in Michigan are in Bloomfield, Deerborn, and Warren.