Racine-based Imperial Laundry Services LLC has closed and its assets are being sold at auction.
Imperial filed for Chapter 128 receivership in June, and the initial hope was to find a buyer for the whole company through a court-supervised receivership proceeding. A buyer was not found, said C.J. Murray, an attorney at Beck, Chaet, Bamberger & Polsky S.C., the receiver.
As a result, Imperial shut down on Sept. 8. A handful of employees stayed on to wind down the operations until Sept. 15, and the approximately 100 employees at Imperial have all now been laid off, Murray said.
Wood Dale, Illinois-based industrial auction firm HyperAMS purchased most of the assets of Imperial Laundry on Sept. 15 for $325,000, according to court records. The company plans to auction the assets, said Gene Arenson, senior vice president, business development, appraiser.
Established in 1991, Imperial Laundry specialized in laundry services for the health care and hospitality industries in Wisconsin and Illinois. This is the second time the business has undergone bankruptcy proceedings in the past five years, Murray said.
“We marketed it thoroughly and we were unable to find a going concern buyer,” he said, adding laundry is a difficult industry. “You have to have a lot of volume and there’s a lot of competition.”
