The Scariest Word in Retail: Bankruptcy

It’s almost Halloween. The high street is haunted, not by ghosts, but by empty shopfronts. Boarded-up windows where brands once thrived. And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear something far more chilling than any horror film: the rustle of administration notices being taped to glass doors.

There’s a word scarier than any monster this season. It’s not “zombie” or “vampire”. It’s bankruptcy.

It wasn’t a creature of the night that brought down Claire’s Accessories, Ted Baker or Forever 21. It was complacency. And the truly terrifying part? It could happen to your brand too.

The Retail Graveyard: A Cautionary Tale in Three Acts

Let’s visit the tomb of fallen retail giants and examine what went wrong.

Claire’s Accessories: Death by Debt and Digital Denial

Claire’s Accessories once dominated teenage shopping trips. At its peak, the brand operated over 3,000 stores globally. Then came the fall. In 2018, Claire’s filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, crushed under $2 billion in debt. This year, it happened again.

The autopsy revealed a familiar pattern: heavy borrowing to fuel expansion, followed by an inability to innovate when customer behaviour shifted online. Whilst competitors evolved their customer experience and embraced e-commerce, Claire’s remained stubbornly physical. The brand survived bankruptcy but emerged diminished, a shadow of its former self.

The lesson? Debt is only sustainable if you’re investing in evolution. Claire’s wasn’t.

Ted Baker: The Slow Fade of Relevance

Ted Baker’s collapse in 2024 was an important lesson about brand erosion. Once the darling of British fashion, Ted Baker lost its way through a toxic combination of accounting scandals, leadership failures and a failure to stay relevant.

The brand couldn’t decide if it was premium or accessible. Its digital transformation lagged competitors. Physical overexpansion drained resources just as footfall declined. By the time administrators were called in, Ted Baker had become background noise in a crowded market.

Here’s the horror: Ted Baker didn’t die overnight. It faded slowly, failing to adapt whilst competitors sharpened their propositions and owned their niches.

Forever 21: The Discount Death Spiral

Forever 21’s story is perhaps the most relevant for today’s e-commerce leaders. The fast-fashion giant filed for bankruptcy in 2019, closing 200 stores. In 2025 they found themselves in the same position again.

The culprit? An overreliance on discounting that destroyed margins. Forever 21 trained customers to wait for sales, then competed on price alone in a race to the bottom. Expansion into international markets burned cash without building sustainable profitability.

The Monsters Under Your Bed: Today’s E-commerce Horrors

These retail failures brands endured aren’t ancient history. They’re a warning. Because the monsters that killed them are still prowling and they’re coming for e-commerce brands next.

Rising CAC is the vampire

It drains your lifeblood slowly, quarter after quarter. Meta CPMs get higher year-over-year. Google Shopping costs climbing. Your customer acquisition cost is sucking your margins dry and you’re too busy running campaigns to notice you’re already anaemic.

Discount fatigue is the zombie horde

You’ve trained customers to wait for Black Friday. Then Cyber Monday. Then January sales. Now they expect 20% off just for existing. Your average order value is down, your margin is shot, and still conversion rates are flatlining.

Promotional dependency is the ghost

You can see the damage, but you don’t know how to stop it. Every time you try to pull back on discounting, revenue drops. So, you discount again. And again. Until there’s nothing left.

And if you’re reading this thinking “that won’t happen to us,” you’re already in the danger zone.

Breaking the Curse: Value Over Volume

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to end up in the retail graveyard. But survival requires a fundamental shift in strategy. You need to stop competing on price and start competing on value.

This is the hard commercial reality. The brands surviving and thriving right now aren’t the ones discounting hardest. They’re the ones adding genuine value to the customer journey and they’re doing it through smart partnerships, not margin-killing promotions.

Brand partnerships are the silver bullet

When executed properly, they allow you to offer customers more without giving away your own margin. You’re not slashing 20% off. You’re partnering with complementary brands to create offers that increase basket value and build loyalty.

Take Shark Germany. Through strategic brand partnerships, they achieved a 38.75% basket lift. Not through discounting their own products. Through adding value customers actually wanted.

Or Secret Sales, who saw a 66% increase in completion rate by integrating partner offers at key points in the customer journey. They reduced friction and increased conversion without touching their own pricing structure.

Wild achieved a 10% conversion lift using the same approach. More sales. Same margins. No race to the bottom.

This is how you break the curse. You make your proposition more valuable without making it cheaper.

Alternatives to Discounting: Your Survival Guide

If you want to avoid an e-commerce bankruptcy horror story, here’s your action plan:

Audit your promotional calendar

How many days this year did you not have a discount running? If the answer is fewer than 200, you’ve got a problem. You’re training customers to never pay full price.

Build strategic partnerships

Identify complementary brands your customers actually care about. Structure partnerships that add value without cannibalising margin. This is about creating genuinely compelling offers that increase basket value.

Optimise for lifetime value, not first purchase

Stop obsessing over CAC payback in 30 days. If you’re only breaking even on first purchase because you’re discounting heavily, you’re building a house on sand. Focus on second purchase rates, retention and genuine customer lifetime value.

Test value-add strategies ruthlessly

Free shipping thresholds. Gift with purchase. Exclusive access. Early product drops. There are dozens of ways to increase conversion rate without discounting. You just need to test them systematically instead of reflexively reaching for the discount button.

Don’t Let Your Brand Become a Ghost Story

The retailers in the graveyard didn’t fail overnight. They failed slowly, making small compromises that compounded into catastrophe. A little more debt. One more discount. Another quarter of declining margins.

Until suddenly, it wasn’t slow anymore. It was over.

You don’t want to be a cautionary tale in someone else’s Halloween marketing ideas for e-commerce article. Certainly don’t want your CMO successor explaining to a new board what went wrong. Or don’t want to be the brand that “just couldn’t adapt.”

The choice is yours. Keep discounting and hope for the best. Or build a sustainable growth strategy based on value, partnerships, and actual profitability.

The clock is ticking. And unlike the monsters in horror films, commercial reality doesn’t care if you’re ready or not.

Ready to ditch the discount and partner smarter?

Book a 15-minute strategy session with Tyviso to learn how your brand can drive more sales and increase conversion rates, no sorcery required. Just proven partnerships strategies that work for e-commerce brands ready to grow sustainably.