American Apprarel, the Made-in-Los-Angeles hipster casual company that built a global following and a fortune on the back of T-shirts and its founder's antics, has seen its financial health tank.
The company, famous for its flashy multicolored T-shirts and clothes that are somewhere between sporty and clubby, is being required to deliver its first quarter earnings to financial authorities by Monday at the latest or else its shares could be pulled out of trading in New York.
The company has warned it is expecting losses for the first two quarters of this year in addition to those of 2009.
It has made its 100-percent Made in the USA motto a calling card when the norm is outsourcing production to Asia. And it doesn't plan to outsource to cut costs now, an American Apparel spokesman told AFP Monday.
CEO Dov Charney, a 41-year-old originally from Canada, has built a global brand at breakneck speed, embracing youthful sexiness and a lot of suggestive poses by models along the way. The company has launched 285 stores in more than 20 countries in seven years.
And Charney has also had to face several employees' charges that he sexually harassed them.
Meanwhile the company has struggled since US immigration inspectors ordered it to dismiss some 1,500 workers in Los Angeles because they did not have work documents.
During the recession, sales were off but the company continued to open new stores apace.
A company spokesman told AFP rumors of bankruptcy were untrue.
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