By Eric C. Rodenberg STEVENS POINT, Wis. – The Antique Trader, has been a part of the antiques and collectibles industry for more than 60 years. It was one of the first major newspapers to connect antiques buyers and sellers and debuted about a decade prior to AntiqueWeek. The Antique Trader is now for sale following a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its parent company F+W Media on March 16. F+W Media CEO Greg Osberg cited outstanding debts totaling $105.2 million and only $2.5 million in available cash in a petition filed with a Delaware bankruptcy court for short-term debt relief. The petition also stipulated the sale of its assets including a portfolio of at least 50 publications. The company’s largest individual creditor, according to court records, is printer LSC Communications, which is owed $2.7 million. Additional debt of $953,000 is owed to Oracle and $729,000 to fulfillment provider Palm Coast Data, among numerous others. Osberg and other F+W officials would not comment on the bankruptcy and its ramifications on the Antique Trader. In a court briefing, Osberg wrote: “The company’s decision to focus on e-commerce and de-emphasize print and digital publishing accelerated the decline of the company’s publishing business and the resources spent on technology hurt the company’s viability because the technology was flawed and customers often had issues with the websites.” Peter Jurew, F+W Media’s communication officer and the only authorized F+W spokesman, would only confirm the corporation filed for bankruptcy protection, “while it considers offers from interested parties who wish to buy all or part of the company including Antique Trader. “Otherwise, Antique Trader and all F+W properties are operating business as usual,” he said. He would answer no further questions posed by AntiqueWeek. In his petition to the court, Osberg said the company is pursuing two separate sales of its book and magazine publishing businesses, aiming to complete both by midsummer. Within the documents filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court, Osberg primarily blamed F+W’s insolvent situation on a decision, made a decade ago, to shift the company’s focus to e-commerce in order to offset declines on the magazine side. Since 2015 alone, the company’s subscriber base across all its titles as decreased by 36 percent to 21.5 million, with advertising revenue down 34 percent, according to the trade magazine Folio. To avoid defaulting on its loans, F+W executed a debt-for-equity swap in 2017, transferring a 97 percent ownership stake in the company to its lenders. This radically reduced the company’s debts and provided it with $15 million of new funding, but that was exhausted within six months “largely as a result of mismanagement,” Osberg told the court. As a consequence, then-CEO Tom Beusse was replaced by the company’s board in January 2018 (in addition with F+W’s then COO and CTO) and Osberg was brought in from outside the company. Shortly after Osberg came on board in January 2018, F+W laid off about 40 percent of its employees before determining that it would run out of cash again by April. Antique Trader is an antiques and collectible magazine that is published 24 times a year in Stevens Point, Wis. Founded in 1957 by Babka Publishing Co, the Trader, was initially a strictly advertising newspaper that connected buyers and sellers of antique and collectible items. In 1972, the newspaper introduced industry and collecting news to its format. In 1992, Babka Publishing sold Antique Trader and its related entities to Landmark Corporation, which, in turn, resold the titles to Krause Publications seven years later. In 2002, Krause Publications was purchased by F+W. |