Best To Liquidate All Remaining Stores

All 169 stores operated by Best Products Co. will be liquidated after an investor group that had hoped to keep half the outlets open decided it could not operate the beleaguered chain.

“We’re going out of business,” Ross Richardson, a spokesman for the Richmond, Va.-based Best Products, said Tuesday.

The investor group said earlier this month that it would close 81 Best stores, including two in Spokane, putting 4,500 full- and part-time employees out of work. But if a federal bankruptcy court approves Tuesday’s agreement, 5,500 more would lose their jobs, Richardson said.

A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 19 in Richmond, he said.