Rivers Stores to Shut down after Failing to Find a Buyer

Gdsamp on 23/01/2025 - 14:58

Rivers stores to shut down after failing to find a buyer

Clothing and footwear retailer Rivers say it will close all 136 stores across the country, as parent company Mosaic Brands handlers were unable to find a new buyer.
Mosaic Brands went into administration last year, with a number of its other retail chains going down with it at the time.
Receivers tried to unsuccessfully to find a buyer, and announced on Thursday that the stores will close from April with 650 people losing their jobs.

Godspeed

Fashion & Apparel

Related Stores

Rivers Australia
Rivers Australia

Comments

    • MrMcHairyHead on 24/01/2025 - 08:13
      +7

      You really added something to the discussion here.

      • Crow K on 24/01/2025 - 14:04
        +3

        Here, there and everywhere. That's how you work on a legacy effort of 250,000 of these style responses.

        • MrMcHairyHead on 24/01/2025 - 14:24
          +3

          I don't get the point of it :/

          • Loopholio on 24/01/2025 - 15:18

            @MrMcHairyHead: There is a theory that jv uses a bot to post most of their nonsense. They could be sitting around all day manually posting, but that would get boring fast.

            • MrMcHairyHead on 24/01/2025 - 15:23
              +1

              @Loopholio: But still, either way… why?

              • Loopholio on 24/01/2025 - 15:35
                +1

                @MrMcHairyHead: To win the most posts award at the end of the year with little effort. That's.. no. No I don't understand why someone would do this.

                There's a person who talks constantly in the EVE Online mining chat. They do so because they are cooked on drugs. That's not a theory, they said as much. One night they kept telling everyone how they were instructing a young boy using telepathy. I told them to leave young boys alone and they lost their shit.

                Apparently druggies love MMOs because they get so into it they spend every waking hour doing everything.

                Why jv is like this, we will never know.

  • Gdsamp on 23/01/2025 - 15:01
    +35

    Looks like Rivers has finally run dry.
    The current was too strong for Rivers to stay afloat.
    Rivers couldn't navigate through the retail rapids.
    Rivers has reached the end of its stream.
    It’s the final wave for Rivers.
    The flow of customers just wasn’t enough to keep Rivers going.
    Rivers has docked its last shipment.
    The tide has turned, and Rivers is sinking.
    No more swimming upstream for Rivers—it’s the end of the line.
    Looks like Rivers couldn’t stay in the retail channel.

    • Jimothy Wongingtons on 23/01/2025 - 15:19
      +15

      Looks like Rivers has finally run dry.

      I think you mean

      Looks like Rivers … has finally run dry.

      (• _ •)
      ( • _ •)>⌐■-■
      (⌐■_■)

      YEAHHHHHH

    • Sammy2000 on 24/01/2025 - 09:37
      +1

      Is this your draft for the TV news story? That's a lot of puns

    • Bidet Mate on 25/01/2025 - 13:47
      +2

      The banks now control the Rivers

  • pegaxs on 23/01/2025 - 15:28
    +5

    Wooo… Who had "Rivers" on their 2025 "retail Deadpool"??

    • neil on 23/01/2025 - 15:44
      +8

      Series4Episode10

      • BepisCola on 25/01/2025 - 08:43
        +1

        they were already in the process of bankruptcy since at least November

    • drfuzzy on 24/01/2025 - 15:33
      +1

      It was on my 2000 "retail Deadpool" which was the first year I walked into one of their stores
      I admire the resilience to keep going this long

  • Clear on 23/01/2025 - 15:45
    +4

    When they started selling vacuums a couple years ago it was a clear sign of trouble.

    • Ughhh on 23/01/2025 - 21:58
      +2

      Everyones riding the marketplace train

  • Jimothy Wongingtons on 23/01/2025 - 15:54
    +1

    I have to wonder if they even had any interested buyers for the business?

  • marcozmitch on 23/01/2025 - 16:00
    +5

    The shoes that had a strong, horrible rubber smell that could not be got rid of through any means…

  • Guybrush57 on 23/01/2025 - 16:01
    +30

    Weird how Rivers made quality Australian-made clothes and shoes and did well but then moved production overseas where the quality turned to shit then that business model failed.

    • AustriaBargain on 23/01/2025 - 16:03

      Why did the quality go to shit? Couldn't they send some of their people to the factories in China to make sure they are doing it right. Or is it hard to justify paying an Aussie that much to fly to China when you're meant to be cutting costs..

      • Jolakot on 23/01/2025 - 21:08
        +7

        It's largely a cultural thing, look up "Cha Bu Duo": https://www.sourcingallies.com/blog/cha-bu-duo

        It is a great mentality if you're making cheap items, why be perfect with 1 when you can just make 2, especially when your quota is based on quantity. You work right to the limit of what quality control will allow before knocking it back, anything more than that is wasteful.

        It's all about the cost/quality ratio. You manufacture in Australia because you want quality, Australian workers are fully aware that if the quality is bad, their job will be outsourced as money will be saved with minimal quality loss. You manufacture in China (Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam etc) because you want to save money, Chinese workers are fully aware that if they cannot meet quotas to minimize costs, their job might be sent back on-shore as quality will be increased with acceptable cost difference. It's just optimizing the same number from different sides.

        Good quality control is very hard and quite expensive, how can you have an Australian inspecting every single sock to check for defects or quality loss? And the quality control executives are subject to the same self-interest, if they do their job too well then they risk losing it.

        So the standard almost always becomes just good enough that the customer doesn't complain, at which point you may as well just go to kmart.

        • Sammy2000 on 24/01/2025 - 09:40

          And why go to Kmart when you can buy direct?

          • Jolakot on 24/01/2025 - 11:54
            +1

            @Sammy2000: There are benefits to buying from Australian companies, less risk of toxic chemicals, easier returns/exchanges, and a large t-shirt will be Australian large not Chinese large (aka small).

            Where can you buy direct that's cheaper than Kmart now? Shipping costs have become insane, only seemed viable for large orders.

            • Sammy2000 on 24/01/2025 - 12:00

              @Jolakot: I agree. I try to buy quality over quantity but it is getting harder in Australia over the years. It seems people want cheap crap.
              A lot of people keep telling me about how there is this great website called Temu and how cheap it all is. These were previous Kmart shoppers.

              • A-mak on 24/01/2025 - 16:58
                +1

                @Sammy2000: Temu is not simply a lack of quality it's a total scam.

                Anyone who buys the garbage off their is just bad with money & if they think the quality is acceptable then they have no standards at all.

        • CommuterPolluter on 24/01/2025 - 16:28
          +14

          I take umbrage with this kind of anti-Chinese sentiment. People say “oh the Chinese are so STINGY and SHODDY they even have a saying 一分钱一分货 which means if you pay a little you get crap” or “their attention to detail is so bad they have the saying 差不多 (cha bu duo)”. It’s just bullcrap, we have the EXACT SAME sayings in English, used constantly every day here in Australia (you get what you pay for/pay peanuts get monkeys, more-or-less/she’ll be right). I shudder to think how many times the yobbos who built my house said “she’ll be right”.

          The reason we get cheap junk from China is because that’s what Western consumers and businessmen want. We don’t go to China and offer to pay them MORE for a superior product, we go there asking them if we can pay LESS for a shittier product. Western businessmen come to China and ask them to make something for less money. They’re looking to get something for nothing. If Chinese producers cut corners or reduce quality of inputs they’re only participating in the same game their consumers (western businesses) started. They already know we will buy from the cheapest, crappiest supplier that we can find.

          • Protractor on 25/01/2025 - 10:51
            -2

            @CommuterPolluter: But racism is the lowest hanging fruit in our national orchard..
            It's also, serendipitously, the core dietary component of the LNP.

    • Cluster on 23/01/2025 - 16:41
      +12

      It's a race to the bottom. A business realizes they can outsource and off shore production and does so. If the quality is a little worse? Doesn't matter, people will still buy it. Then the factory is placed under continuing pressure to cut costs regardless of the long term consequences. Factories in China will make world class, top quality products. If you pay them for it. But if you pay peanuts, don't be surprised by the result.

      • CommuterPolluter on 24/01/2025 - 16:30
        +3

        Baofeng radios? DJI drones? Iphones? “Cheap Chinese crap”

    • TEER3X on 24/01/2025 - 18:26
      +1

      Which manufacturer hasn't gone overseas?

      Probably impossible to survive in their industry (and most others) without moving production overseas.

    • tenpercent on 23/01/2025 - 18:56
      -4

      Too many humans? You been drinking some 1970s Club of Rome koolaid?
      The myth that there are too many humans on the Earth is an elitist scam.
      I'm tempted to go and have an extra 3 children just to offset your lack of offspring. 1 for mum, 1 for dad, 1 for the country and 3 for Protractor.

      • brendanm on 23/01/2025 - 22:38
        -2

        There are too many humans.

        • tenpercent on 24/01/2025 - 15:16

          Proof?

          • Crow K on 24/01/2025 - 15:36

            @tenpercent: If you click his profile you can read some of his other posts

            • brendanm on 24/01/2025 - 18:13

              @Crow K: Thank god you're ok, I was worried something had happened to you.

          • brendanm on 24/01/2025 - 18:12
            -1

            @tenpercent: The lack of resources, stripping of forest, overfishing, pollution etc etc etc.

        • CommuterPolluter on 27/01/2025 - 08:07
          +3

          If you want to solve a problem on the world-scale you should always start with yourself.

          • brendanm on 27/01/2025 - 11:54

            @CommuterPolluter: That is actually the opposite of what should happen, hardly surprising that you fail to understand this.

      • Protractor on 24/01/2025 - 09:35
        -4

        LOL.
        You keep riding that barbed wire canoe to the promise land. Don't forget to pick up a perpetual motion machine on your way past the end of that rainbow.

        • tenpercent on 24/01/2025 - 15:22
          +1

          There's no need to violate laws of thermodynamics when Australia has so much coal to burn or uranium to fission.

          • brendanm on 24/01/2025 - 18:15
            +2

            @tenpercent: Fossil fuels are a finite resource. Does a finite resource last a longer time, or a shorter time, when the world population continues to grow?

            What advantage does a higher population have for the everyday person? Nothing

            What advantage does a higher population have for huge multinationals? More people to work for leas money making crappy trinkets, and more people to sell crappy trinkets to.

            • tenpercent on 25/01/2025 - 19:07
              +1

              @brendanm: How long do you suppose Australia's fossil fuels can last?
              There's approx 5,800,000 petajoules worth of coal. Australia uses about 700 petajoules of electricity each year. So that's over 8200 years of coal fired electricity production left. Maybe that number comes down if we all switch to electric cars. Maybe it's cut in half if Australia's population doubles and no change in typical electricity usage patterns. That's still a long time.
              And we have another 692,160 petajoules worth of uranium. So that could add another almost 1000 years of electricity at today's usage.
              And that's just the stuff we know about and has been determined to be recoverable with today's technology and prices.

              • brendanm on 25/01/2025 - 21:53
                -1

                @tenpercent: So we should overrun the world, steup rainforests, set up concrete slums, kill native wildlife, just because we can? As it is, a lot of the world's population live in abject poverty. Wouldn't it be better to have a higher quality of life for a lower quantity of people, rather than the inverse?

                As I said, there is no advantage to a massive population to the everyday person.

                • tenpercent on 26/01/2025 - 10:07
                  +2

                  @brendanm: Don't be silly with your strawman arguments. Australia (and Russia, and the US, and China, and Europe, and many other countires) has been reforesting for decades (there's more tree coverage now than 20 years ago). Yeah people (profanity) up in the past, but it's being dealt with already. There's still plenty of land for agriculture and for human habitation and the rest of nature to co-exist. Every human on the planet today could fit into the state of Texas living at a similar urban density as London and there would still be room to spare in Texas. Yeah the South Americans could do better with the Amazon rainforest, and South East Asians with their tropical rainforests, but that's not for us to decide (unless colonialism is your thing). Aussies having fewer kids is going to have no impact on that. There's no need to have a cry and fly to Switzerland or Canada to participate in their assisted suicide programs because of a false sense of overpopulation.

                  I see you have at least one offspring. If you genuinely think the world is overpopulated (I am yet to see the evidence), maybe you should have thought about maybe not having your own offspring before coming on here to berate other people for having children.

                  • Protractor on 26/01/2025 - 10:24
                    -3

                    @tenpercent: What utter dross.Australia grows a pittance of trees.Our cities are are becoming canopy depleted heat sinks like everywhere.

                    The flare gun BS of suicide programs is the intellectual; spitball thrown up by the far right. Breeding less kills nobody,it just impacts your shareholding bloodbank.

                    If you think there's no point were too many people is never enough, or that circumstances don't change and afford the need to change behaviours, your deeper down than your climbing capacity.

                    A plantation is not a forest. Most plantations are harvested. That process is just a snake eating it's tail as long as we breed like flies, the positive impact is almost non existent.

                    Also, climate change denial is a mental health condition.

                    • tenpercent on 26/01/2025 - 11:48

                      @Protractor: Australia grows a pittance sh#t tonne of trees. From 2000 to 2020 Australia had a net gain of 1.6 Mha of tree cover of which 1.2Mha was outside plantations.
                      In most of the developed world forest coverage inflected from a decline to an increase year on year sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. For Australia that inflection occurred in about 2010 and for China it was in the early 1990s. Globally the total annual deforestation peaked in the 1980s and has been declining (i.e. approaching net zero forested area loss) since then. Although populations have still been increasing.
                      So contrary to popular doomsdayers capitalists who want to sell you or your government something, the sky is not falling and the world will not run out of trees.

                      Breeding more kills nobody too. On the contrary breeding more creates more lives (by its very definition).

                      Strawman. I didn't say there's no point at which there is too many people. I'm saying that currently there is no where near too many people. There's plenty of land available for urbanisation, for agriculture, for other human uses, without any additional deforestation and with plenty of capacity for greening the deserts.

                      Climate change happens of course. That's why Greenland (now covered in snow and ice) used to be farmed by the Vikings over 700 years ago. It's why people could go ice skating on the Thames in winter many years throughout 1300 to 1850 (little ice age caused by the sun, see Maunder Minimum). It's also why there were alternative routes across the Swiss Alps back in ancient Roman times that have since been covered with metres and metres of snow and ice. It's also why the Dinosaurs existed at a time when the Earth's temperature was on average 8 to 15 degrees Celsius warmer than today. And it's why woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos used to roam the Mediterenean throughout the last ice age but now the majority of the Pleistocene megafauna is extinct.

                  • brendanm on 27/01/2025 - 11:52
                    -2

                    @tenpercent:

                    Every human on the planet today could fit into the state of Texas living at a similar urban density as London

                    Hmmm. Texas land area of 695,662,000m2. World population of 8 billion. 0.087m2 for each person. Not sure your math ads up there.

                    I see you have at least one offspring

                    Goodness me, how many comments did you trawl through to find that?

                    If you genuinely think the world is overpopulated (I am yet to see the evidence), maybe you should have thought about maybe not having your own offspring before coming on here to berate other people for having children.

                    The world becomes overpopulated by people having 6+ children, not people who have 2. 2 isn't even a proper replacement number. Again, perhaps math is not your strong suit?

                    Quite sad you don't care about the millions of kids being born into poverty each year. Yet again, quantity is not better than quality.

                    • tenpercent on 30/01/2025 - 12:22

                      @brendanm:

                      Hmmm. Texas land area of 695,662,000m2. World population of 8 billion. 0.087m2 for each person. Not sure your math ads up there.

                      Yeah you aren't sure at all. It is YOUR maths that's incorrect. You're off by a factor of 1000! Don't be ashamed, maths and logic isn't a strong suit for doomsday cultists generally.
                      695,662 km^2 does not equal 695,662,000 m^2
                      1 km^2 = 1000^2 m^2 = 1,000,000 m^2
                      So the land area of Texas is actually approximately 695,660,000,000 m^2.
                      8,000,000,000 people into that area is 86 m^2 per person, so each person would have on average an area of 9.3m by 9.3m to themselves.
                      Looking at it differently it's approximately 11,500 people per square kilometre. Central London has a population denisty of 11,218 people per km^2. So it is a similar urban density.

                      Goodness me, how many comments did you trawl through to find that?

                      It took me about 5 seconds looking at your profile.

                      The world becomes overpopulated by people having 6+ children, not people who have 2. 2 isn't even a proper replacement number. Again, perhaps math is not your strong suit?

                      Again you don't define what you mean by "overpopulated". What are your thresholds for "overpopulated" and why? For some populations at some points in time (during famine + war) 6 births per woman could be a steady replacement fertility rate. 2.1 births per woman is generally considred the replacement fertility rate in developed countries but even that might not be high enough as women start having those babies later in life versus previous generations. And note 2.1 births per woman is an average including women who do have children and women who have no children at all. That some women won't have any children at all necessitates that those who do should have more than 2.1 on average so the whole population reaches the 2.1 replacement rate. I really don't think maths is YOUR strong suit.

                      Quite sad you don't care about the millions of kids being born into poverty each year.

                      Millions of kids being born into poverty around the world each year is not because Australia has around 9000 years worth of fossil fuels at energy consumption level. It is not even because women choose not to or don't have the option to choose foeticide. It is because of policy choices by their corrupt governments and policy choices by other corrupt governments who interact with their own corrupt governments.
                      Technically speaking one way of reducing the number of children living in poverty is to reduce the number of children, sure. But that's a little messed up. Perhaps you'll advocate for infanticide next?
                      However, the overhwhelming majority of children in Australia are not living in abject poverty like some children mostly in the undeveloped world, and the overwhelming majority of those who are living in poverty in Australia (note that poverty in Australia is defined differently to international standards so its not an apples to apples comparison with a child in poverty in Gaza or South Sudan for instance) are not living that way simply because their mothers gave birth to them or simply because they exist.

                      Yet again, quantity is not better than quality.

                      Are you suggesting that your 2 chidren (I'm assuming 2 based on your earlier comment) in Australia are better "quality" than the 4 children of a woman in sub-saharan Africa? Or better "quality" even than my soon-to-be 6 children (**remember I'm getting 3 more to make up for Protractor's 0 children)? Hmm… Sounds a tad like eugenics.

                      **Your 2, plus my 6, plus Protractor's 0 averages out to 2.7. Even if the rest of Australia did that I don't think Australia will be overpopulated (whatever that is actually supposed to mean) any time soon. So not only is the concept of "overpopulation" vague, the idea that it's happening or that any interventions need to occur (especially regarding Australia not using its natural energy resources) to slow population growth is tenuous.

                      • brendanm on 30/01/2025 - 12:59

                        @tenpercent:

                        Are you suggesting that your 2 chidren (I'm assuming 2 based on your earlier comment) in Australia are better "quality" than the 4 children of a woman in sub-saharan Africa?

                        Learnt to read. They have a better quality of life.

                        As I said many times, is it better to have quantity, or quality? You seem to be happy having 20 billion people.in the world, and half of them almost dead from malnutrition, rather than have 4 billion people in the world, who all have a nice time.

                        You still haven't given one positive to a massive world population.

    • Zythyx on 24/01/2025 - 08:10

      Straight from /r/thanosdidnothingwrong

      • Cluster on 24/01/2025 - 16:44
        +1

        I quite liked him in Squid Game 2. Lol.

        • BoltThrower on 26/01/2025 - 05:16

          In Marvel movies, Thanos was defeated by Iron Man.
          In Squid Game, Thanos was defeated by Iron Fork.

  • Pelicannn on 23/01/2025 - 17:45
    +5

    I honestly don’t know anyone who I grew up with (I’m now early 30’s) and still to this day, don’t know anyone who has or does shop at rivers. Surprised they didn’t go bust sooner.

    I feel like their target audience was middle aged people who were in between buying their clothes at RM Williams and Kmart.

    • plmko on 23/01/2025 - 23:43
      +2

      You make it sound bad but knowing where people shop is just weird. Like does anyone tell you they shop at Kmart or are keen to show you what they bought at Bonds or how they nabbed a bargain at Harvey Norman

      • Pelicannn on 23/01/2025 - 23:48
        +2

        I mean when I have been and still go to the shops with family or friends… none of them say ‘I want to go check out rivers’. Naturally I know where they shop when I’m shopping with them.

        Plenty of them do say ‘let’s go check out xyz’ be it BigW, Myer, Kmart etc. Rivers though, never. In fact, I’d say I’ve probably walked into a Rivers less than three times in my entire life.

    • Ughhh on 24/01/2025 - 07:25
      +1

      Their target market has always been middle aged people, mostly women. Hence why the parent company is failing because all their brands are competing with each other.

  • CyberMurning on 23/01/2025 - 17:58
    -2

    Lol should be dead 10 years ago

  • happydude on 23/01/2025 - 18:01
    +3

    I feel bad for the staff, but otherwise could not care less.

    Hated their stuff. Target, Kmart, and Big W much better for cheapo stuff.

  • wetsandwich on 24/01/2025 - 01:28

    What sort of strange farmer-bogan-cocaine-sniffing-banker was their target market anyway?

  • Stuj on 24/01/2025 - 07:13

    Well overdue…. Now imagine the landfill that that junk stock left unsold is gonna make.

  • Jake D on 24/01/2025 - 11:45
    +1

    Dozens of daggy uncles are devastated by this news.

    • Protractor on 24/01/2025 - 12:19
      +3

      Even more will celebrate not getting shit clothing/footwear gifts at Xmas. How many faux Hawaiian shirts and ill fitting sandals or slippers does a bloke need.

      Condolences to Uncle Ian

    • pierrejb on 24/01/2025 - 17:18
      +2

      Now there is no competition to keep Lowes on their toes…

  • Kiro on 24/01/2025 - 16:54
    +2

    Up a shite river without a buyaddle

  • grasstown on 25/01/2025 - 07:23

    “The closure makes Rivers the seventh brand in the Mosaic group to be axed following Rockmans, Autograph, Crossroads, W Lane and BeMe in September and Katies late last year.

    KPMG say they are still looking to sell the remaining Mosaic Brands including Millers and Noni B”

    I didn’t know rockmans and Katie’s are gone. Nono B still seems quite popular

  • gromit on 25/01/2025 - 11:35

    This one goes int he catch category, they only sold utter garbage so no loss

  • figarow on 25/01/2025 - 14:23
    -2

    Related topic how is Lowes still in business? The boomers are dwindling and EVERY time I pass one it's empty.

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