Stein Mart in Cornelius

Nov. 19. As the holiday shopping season gets under way, shoppers are missing Stein Mart.

The Cornelius store closed two years ago after the off-price chain went bankrupt during the height of the pandemic.

Stein Mart, which leased the Shops at Fresh Market space starting in 1999, was a mainstay of Lake Norman shopping for two decades.

Online, with new owner

But you can still get your fix online.  Stein Mart continues to operate as an online retailer, which is not related to the former company. Retail Ecommerce Ventures took over Stein Mart’s Ecommerce operations.

While men’s clothing is not offered online, you’ll find pretty much everything else you expected at the old Stein Mart store.

So long to stores

Brick and mortar stores went away as Stein Mart struggled with the fast-changing retail landscape, not to mention the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.

In August 2020, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based  company announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that it planned to close all of its 279 stores.

Stein Mart in Cornelius closed its doors for the last time on Oct. 26, 2020.

According to the bankruptcy filing, the problems in the retail industry began before the coronavirus. But the July 2020 resurgence sank the ship, the bankruptcy filing said.

Two new stores 

Total Wine and HomeSense will move into the former Stein Mart space next year; each will take about half the space.

Miami-based Retail Ecommerce Ventures was the winner of a bankruptcy court auction for the intellectual property of Stein Mart. The company, in December 2020, said it would pay $6.02 million for the Stein Mart nameplate, as well as its private-label brands, domain names, social media assets and other customer data.