It hasn't been a particularly good week for Scoop NYC. Actually, it hasn't been a particularly good year—the company lost its founder, Stefani Greenfield, last September, and its new CEO, Melanie Cox, in February. This week, however, trouble really struck. First, 17 workers announced that they planned to sue for missing wages. Among them were seven former employees from West Africa who'd already filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice claiming that the store fired them unfairly on questions about their immigration status.
Then WWD started poking around Scoop's finances, and today the paper's lead story focuses on Scoop's money problems. Since September 2008, it turns out, the company's had factor issues not unlike the ones Barneys was facing in February. The Shophound explains: "Factors are a quiet, usually rarely heard from component of the fashion industry who approve retailers' credit and help facilitate wholesale transactions. They are often the first to raise the red flag indicating that a retailer is in trouble." In Scoop's case, that flag has been waving for months. A representative of the company that owns Scoop told WWD that their finances are sound, but it clients seem to think otherwise.
