The month of November was a significant one for Zoot, the Czech online fashion retailers that collapsed towards the end of 2019 under a load of debt it couldn’t manage. Having gone through a restructuring in which unsecured creditors received just a tenth of the principal they’d put into it, the company turned a profit for the first time in its history. Zoot ended the month CZK 600,000 in the black, which was a positive way to go into the crucial month of December which often makes or breaks retailers. The investment group Natland moved decisively last year to buy up failed loans from a variety of creditors, a move that put it in the driver’s seat when it came time for bankruptcy proceedings. By the time Zoot emerged from court protection in the spring, Natland had installed a pair of crisis managers that acted ruthlessly to cut costs, closing numerous pick-up points and slashing the marketing budget. But they also opened a store in August in Centrum Černý Most and began to make inroads into new online arrivals like About You and Zalando.
